The "On-in-Ten" Comic Poetry Competition
Results of the Contest
Congratulation to the winners of the On-in-Ten Comic Poetry Contest! The ten winning entries, judged by Virginia Poet Laureate George Garrett, are listed below. Special congratulations to our grand prize winner, Bob McKenty, whose poem "General Custer" was judged the top of the heap by R.H.W. Dillard. Congratulations to these and the many wonderful and deserving entries we received.
General Custer
General Custer rode with pride.
The lust for battle filled him.
Hell-bent was he on Siouxicide —
And, sure enough, it killed him.
--Bob McKenty, Matawan, NJ
Cutting Commentary
Complaining that Life was absurd
And that nothing worthwhile had occurred
She took her own life
With a blunt Bowie knife.
Is she happier now? No one's heard
--Mary Walton D'Angelo, Atlanta, GA
Compost
My neighbor calls it compost,
but the odor truly tells.
A garbage heap by another name,
just like a rose, still smells.
--Deborah J. Beyer, Paw Paw, MI
The frustrations are few that compare
With the one caused by poets who dare
To make their odes fine
Till the very last line,
And you find there's no rhyme waiting for you.
--Carlos Alcalá, Sacramento, CA
A cranky old Yankee named Frost
Played tennis with youngsters and lost
Till he cried, "What a let down!
You've taken the net down!
No wonder you hit it acrost!"
--Browning Porter, Charlottesville, VA
We said goodbye, you're gone for good,
And, sadly, we're forsaken;
We buried you 'cause you looked dead . . .
We hope we weren't mistaken.
--Cap'n Bean (aka, David J. Cyr), East Hartford, CT
The Sadist Gifts His Love
No flowers! Instead,
a leather belt.
(He liked to make
his presents felt.)
The Trouble with Nostalgia
It's hard to see how,
When I come to review it,
What's glamorous now
Was so dull living through it.
--Joyce La Mers, Oxnard, CA
Clerihew
T. Wentworth Higginson
discovered Dickinson.
When appalled by the view,
helped bury her too.
--Norbert Hirschhorn, New Haven, CT
If the Mind, when in flight from restraint,
sees beauty and grandeur sans taint—
as Addison notes
in various quotes—
the Will will fall into a faint.
--Laurie Rosenblatt, M.D., Cambridge, MA
