Double time

In Competition No. 3328 you were invited to submit a poem on a topical theme in which the last two words of each line rhyme.

Some competitors were unsure whetherI meant that the last two words in each line should rhyme with each other, or with the next line. I meant the former, but given the ambiguous rubric either approach was acceptable.

My foggy thinking didn’t stop you from producing a cracking entry and, in an especially fiercely contested week, a prize of £25 is awarded to the winners below and honourable mentions go to Alan Millard, Max Ross and Brian Murdoch.

Statement done – ‘Who wins?’ begins;

‘Who gets an untoward reward?’

That pensioner’s a well-off toff,

This claimant does – with scorn – shirk work.

A scheme that now relaxes taxes

Will hardly solve the prices crisis.

The devil in the retail detail

Won’t see the weekly increase cease.

Reluctantly, we must just trust

To luck that some great mind behind

The scenes can really plot what

Might yet let us smile awhile.

But truly, who on earth can plan,

When what’s ahead’s a known unknown?

For fate makes only hindsight right –

The past is sure, the rest best guessed.

W.J. Webster

Last minute, here comes Cameroon, jejune,

Destroyer of the former Euro bureau,

In shadow, still that same cartoon buffoon

Who hides north-west of Truro, chiaroscuro –

Let Chipping Norton’s peer electioneer!

What pedigree! You’ll love his homestead shed!

(Though wasn’t he once thought to be austere, dear?)

Salute the undead blockhead thoroughbred!

He scoffs with glee when at the China diner,

And never slips – he wears a posh galosh:

What empty words! There’s no diviner mynah!

Oh gosh! Pay dosh to hear his wish-wash bosh!

What wisdom! His Confucian convolution

Will charm the world. They love a Lord abroad!

His style! He brings ablution, elocution!

So rave on, Dave, we cheer your fraud, applaud!

Bill Greenwell

Our right-leaning candidate ruthlessly, truthlessly

Claims his opponent is vicious, malicious;

Our leftist responds with hyperbole, verbally

Smearing his foe as flagitious, seditious.

With both of them spouting effective invective

They tussle in tandem, tenacious, pugnacious,

As each by the other is branded uncandid,

Successfully labelled mendacious, fallacious.

Opposed antithetically, antipathetically

Fractious, their polarised missions’ ambitions

Reflect one another, perplexingly, vexingly;

Somehow our two politicians’ positions,

Colliding offensively, incomprehensively

Never align, though they never dissever,

And each, in this strange dialectical spectacle,

Vows to pursue his endeavour forever.

Alex Steelsmith

Couples have strictly come dancing, prancing,

from youthful to coming on eighty – weighty

or slim, as the fire in their veins strains

to carry them over the floor, soar

through a waltz, pasa doble or rhumba number.

The judges are showing their scores; roars

from the crowd as they’re waving a ten, then

the pair voted out must embrace, face

defeat with a rictus-like smile, while

the band trundles on every bleak week,

and we hear the back stories, they’re sad, bad,

a bid for the sympathy vote – note,

if you watch, it’s the same every drear year,

makes you wish that you’d never been born. Yawn.

Sylvia Fairley

The human race craves peace, but we crave war more.

We’ll fight one war then raise the cheer, ‘Encore, war!’

In solemn conclaves we’ve sworn we abhor war,

Yet every continent feels us explore war.

A politician thrives by being a war whore;

Each generation’s weapons reap more war gore;

We slam the peace door shut, fling wide the war door.

(Too bad for us it’s more than metaphor, war.)

The colourful displays of every war corps

At holiday parades help us adore war.

We beat our plowshares after and before war,

Around our fires swap songs that roar with war lore.

The children understand they can’t ignore war,

And adults can’t explain what we wage war for.

We know for sure we lied when we forswore war

Our future’s shaped by their war, my war, your war.

Chris O’Carroll

O roll back that Rwanda propaganda!

It hasn’t stopped a single boat afloat.

The numbers are sky high –

If it doesn’t work, why try?

Why whip a horsey corpse, for Stop Boats votes?

Rewrite those ‘Safe Rwanda’ memoranda.

You know they won’t stand up in court – Abort!

Don’t be a snarly Charlie –

Forego Kigali parley

Lest on election day, you get caught short.

’Tis time to hear some real Rwanda candour.

Be cute. Astute. Reroute this moot dispute!

Your party’s fishy, Rishi.

They’re bolshie, bitchy, twitchy –

So institute a brute, acute reboot!

David Silverman

No. 3331: Exit wounds

You are invited to write a resentful note of departure on behalf of a well-known figure from the field of fact or fiction. Please email entries of up to 150 words to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 3 January.