Spectator competition winners: sonnets on embarrassing ailments

In Competition No. 3288, you were invited to supply a sonnet on an embarrassing ailment. To make space for as many winners as possible, I’ll keep it brief: in an amusing and accomplished entry, the sonnets below nosed ahead of the pack and earn their authors £15.

They flee from me that sometime did me seek
Or make excuse to end our conversation;
They turn away when I begin to speak
Or greet me with a look of consternation.
I wondered many times about the cause
Nor could I fathom why I should feel shame;
I asked myself why I got no applause
When I said something, but no answer came.
And then one day a visit to the doc
Revealed the cause of each departing friend;
The fetid breath I breathed produced a shock
And brought a meeting to a speedy end.
My whole life stinks since that grim diagnosis
Of being ever cursed with halitosis.
Frank McDonald

Earth has not any malady more foul,
No, not ‘down there’ where all remains unseen:
Intestines, liver, gallbladder and spleen,
Stomach, kidneys, pancreas and bowel;
The ailment which impels me now to write
This sad Petrarchan sonnet, full of woe,
Tells of a flaw to everyone on show,
A clearly visible, unseemly sight,
Uniquely large that sits there to my shame
Like some unsightly ruddy-pinkish rose,
That seemingly from out of nowhere came
And which to one and all I must expose,
A curse with an unpalatable name
To wit a fibrous papule on the nose!
Alan Millard

Not ugly, smelly, but those swollen veins
Are normally a subject one avoids:
The itchy bum, the awful rectal pains,
The dread unmentionable haemorrhoids.
Yet