COMPETITION

Not so dumb friends

Jaspistos

IN COMPETITION NO. 2062 you were invited to supply a poem, sweet or sour, written by a pet for the tomb of its late master or mistress.

There's nowt so queer as folk. I know a pipe-smoking, pheasant-shooting landown- er who doesn't like dogs, whereas the metropolitan Rex Harrison once declared that he'd been fonder of his flatulent basset hound, Homer, than of any of his six wives. For myself, my memory of pets is misty, but not with emotion: there was Trixie the alsa- tian, followed by Sneezy the pekinese, a gallant and never-tiring bitch, Whisky and Soda, my two budgies who died of cold because I spent half the money my parents gave me for birdseed on the Beano, a tor- toise called Zebedee which escaped, a goldfish won at a fair one night which was floating belly upward in the bowl next morning, and a kitten I rescued from hypothermia in the snow, christened by my son Moustache, a name which, Jaspistos- like, I pointed out was an anagram of mouse and chat. My summing up? Admire cats but never love them, give any dog three miles exercise a day, and draw the line at hamsters.

The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, except for the last two, who get £10. The bottle of The Macallan The Malt Scotch whisky goes to G.M. Davis.

My mistress, Dawn, the Python Girl, Has shuffled off her mortal coil, That lissome form round which I'd curl In heady scents of body oil.

With scales as smooth as polished brass, I'd glide across her naked skin; Like fragile, opalescent glass, It seemed to shimmer from within.

She'd dance her slow, erotic dance While I embraced her sinuously, Each of us in a blissful trance, Entwined in perfect harmony.

But now she lies in endless sleep Beneath this solitary stone, And though a snake can never weep I feel her loss in every bone. (G.M. Davis) The race, past master, is not to the swift.

Take, then, these lines from your unwanted gift (Though lest I fled from your suburban hell

You coolly etched your postcode on my shell). Come winter, when you boxed me up, you said, 'I wait the resurrection of the dead.

Impious mortal! With such godless talk In spring you'd chuck me ends of cabbage-stalk; In June, if you'd too many for some reason, A strawberry. To everything there's a season. You mocked my wrinkled neck, my shambling gait.

I rested, still and sullen; I could wait.

Safe in the chicken-coop which I called home, I saw you age, from my millennial dome With an unblinking, ruthless, saurian eye I marked the way you lived, and watched you die. (Martin Woodhead) Under this slab my master lies, And I have lost, by his demise, The comrade who, for daily sport, Took ball too frayed for tennis court And clouted it towards the sky And watched me catch it, leaping high First bounce, to lay it at his feet, Eager for the umpteenth repeat.

Eager? I'm sure he thought I was Right to the very end, because I strove to hide, by dogged fraud, Just how dog-tired I was, how bored:

I couldn't bear to let him see The game held no delight for me.

Beneath us in his vaulted cell Without that knowledge he sleeps well.

(Ray Kelley) Dispassionate, not much distressed, I lay the Master here to rest, Whose weak attempts to win my heart Served but to drive us more apart, For those who overfeed their cat Reap not affection, only fat.

Meanwhile you stole, by one dread snip, My procreant power of partnership, And foully snatched the sacred rights To copulatory delights.

My tender neck you circled round With a hideous bell that murdered sound,

Till I no longer felt my fur

Throb with its atavistic purr.

Released, I now survive alone, To set these truths upon your stone.

(Godfrey Bullard) Here lies a hack who never knew The fame awarded to the few.

The butt he was of all the street.

His linen wasn't over-sweet, And cloddish folk would wink and grin To see him carried from the inn. He knew the surly bailiff's threat And, truth to tell, he died in debt.

But he was kind and good to me.

Sometimes he'd take me on his knee.

'So, Jeoffrey, my fine friend,' he'd say, 'How will you serve your God today?'

Now I, a stray that walks alone, Entreat the friends who raise his stone They'll let me play this feline part To praise the name of poor Kit Smart.

(Chris Tingley) Augustus Jones Taught me to beg. Over his bones I raise my leg. (Sheila Moore)

I lived in a box for three long years. Now he's in one for ever. Cheers!

(Ron Rubin)