Lucy Vickery presents this week’s competition
In Competition No. 2687 you were invited to take a well-known poem, change one letter in the first line and continue the poem for up to a further 15 lines.
Oh, for more space to do justice to a truly stellar postbag! It was agony whittling the entry down to just six. Deserving of a standing ovation at the very least are Robert Schechter, Gillian Ewing, John Whitworth, Iain Crawford, Chris O’Carroll, George Simmers, David Silverman and Martin Parker. The winners get £25 each, except Basil Ransome-Davies, who gets £30.
She lied in the upstairs bedroom
till she thought her tongue would bleed;
he was halfway wise, but he bought her lies
with the currency of need.
Desire she knew as a compound
of sullen nocturnal bars
and the shabby hells of cheap motels
and the smell of strangers’ cars.
They dwelt in a smoky silence
while the sweat cooled on their flesh
until hands and lips and grinding hips
conspired to lie afresh.
But why scorn the emotional rescue
of a cynical caress
on the purblind date that can palliate
the Moloch of loneliness?
Basil Ransome-Davies
I met a traveller from an antique band
who said, ‘I’m—aarrgghh—Keef Richards,
Rolling Stone,’
and near this wraithlike geezer, on the sand,
half-sunk, a massive visage lay, with frown,
familiar lip, and leer of cold command.
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