In Competition No. 2433 you were asked for a poem in which each line’s rhymed ending is a truncated word.
When I’ve a syllable de trop,
I cut it off without apol:
This verbal sacrifice, I know,
May irritate the schol;
But all must praise my devilish cunn
Who realise that Time is Mon.
This verse from ‘Poetical Economy’ suggests that its author, Harry Graham, writing in the 1930s, was the inventor of this game, one which you played with brio.
The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes to Alan Millard, whose splendid final rhyme tickled me pink.
I’ve never had a pretty bod
And so I visited the doc’s
And asked him for a body mod
To make me fit the norm, approx.
My genes were handed down from ma
Who, sadly, was no beauty ad,
I’d much prefer to look like pa:
Refined in spite of being trad.
The
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