Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: poems with multisyllabic rhyme words

‘Wandering alone like a cloud cloaked in gloominess…’ [Credit: xrrr] 
issue 29 April 2023

In Competition No. 3296, you were invited to provide a poem whose rhyme words are all at least three syllables. You riffed off W.S. Gilbert, Wordsworth and Dylan Thomas,among others, in limericks, double dactyls and villanelles, about subjects ranging from Gary Lineker to sex dolls. Philip Roe, Barbara Jones and Chris Ramsey shone, but the winners below take £25.

The wisdom of Lord Bostock was, to say the least, debatable,
For, shunning living ladies, he had purchased an inflatable.
He took her home, unpacked her, and he used her energetically,
Excitedly, delightedly, and finally frenetically.
He never doubted she could bear the strain of his virility;
She burst when he was in a pose of minimal   stability.
As he hit the floorboards he could feel his femur fracturing,
And, seething, cursed the shoddiness of modern manufacturing.
He vowed he’d have his vengeance with a fury none could mitigate;
Duplicitous solicitors encouraged him to litigate
(They were the sort whose stony hearts were only ever thrillable
By thoughts of affidavits where each syllable was billable).










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