Winter’s tale

In Competition 2826 you were invited to submit nonsense verse on a wintry theme.

The line between sense and nonsense is a blurred one; certainly Carroll’s crazy world has a bonkers internal logic all of its own. But perhaps the best way into nonsense is to put the quest for sense aside for once and simply surrender yourself to the whimsical, the topsy-turvy and the fantastical.

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The winners below take £25 each. The bonus fiver is Brian Allgar’s.

’Twas winter, and the gringeing goves
Did quave and quemble on the ice,
The cameroon howled like a loon
And nibbled frozen lice.
 
‘The miliband is close at hand!’
He sneezed with fear and snarled with pain.
‘A thousand legs like stumpy pegs,
Yet only half a brain!’
 
They called for help, they called for kelp,
They even called upon the loris,
But he, extinct, just blurped and blinked,
And mumbled: ‘Try the boris.’
 
The hero came, though limp and lame,
And chorkled through the snigid forest.
The miliband made one last stand,
But ended bagged and borissed.
Brian Allgar
 
There’s a reindeer in my bathtub, there are
robins in my drawers
And the ghost of Enver Hoxha has dressed up
as Santa Claus,
While the cat is mixing Snowballs with a special
festive twist
(Angie Merkel wants to help him, but she’s on
the waiting list.)
Since the Mafia stole my clothing I’ve been
freezing in the nude,
With only Crossroads on the box and only sprats
for food.
Once Madonna came for breakfast but she
couldn’t break the ice,
And Roger Moore sent margarine, but no one
does that twice.
I remember in the seventies, when Hitler was
top dog,
A PhD in Physics was like falling off a log.
That’s a kind of consolation when you’re  castaway on Mars,
And your beauty sleep is ruined by the howling
of the stars
And mutant rabbits chew your toes and  toothpaste costs the earth
And whenever there’s no surfeit there is sure to
be a dearth.