Poems
by Tony
Dawson
King Henry VIII’s Swives
Henry VIII’s wives are six of his swives
but his swives outnumbered his wives.
It stands to reason that his mating season
was longer than others or else it was treason.
He didn’t need to marry a fancied mate
if he just had the urge to copulate.
He simply summoned the latest arrival
who’d have to agree to ensure her survival.
The Fifth Queen, Catherine Howard
#MeToo 1542
A promiscuous adolescent or abused child?
She was placed at court by her uncle Norfolk
as lady-in-waiting to Anne of Cleves,
the latest Queen, whom Henry compared
to his privy because he didn’t think her pretty.
Annulling that marriage, he planned for another,
his eye alighting upon Catherine Howard
the latest sweet thing he’d seen at court,
yet unaware that the flighty newcomer
was still a courtier’s clandestine lover.
Henry pursued this fetching young woman
and though he then bedded and wedded her,
the tainted creature, unbeknownst to him
continued to dally with her lustful cousin,
the foolish Culpeper, who twice lost his head.
The Queen was next, dragged from the court
to the barge that would whisk her off to the Tower
to await beheading for the crime of adultery.
She asked for a block to rehearse her own death
on the day she would draw her very last breath.
The Pleasures of the Bone
“The grave’s a fine and private place
but none, I think, do there embrace.”
Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress
So, now there’re no more pleasures of the flesh,
we must explore the pleasures of the bone
and prove old Andrew Marvell wrong.
Between her femurs will I lie while tickling
her ribcage, ghosts of mammaries past.
Her well-turned tibia’s medial malleolus
will be crooked over my cervical vertebrae
while I rub against her symphysis pubis.
Then my phalanges will grip her iliac bone
before moving on to her inviting coccyx.
Such pleasures are available once you’ve paid
the ferryman and crossed the River Styx.
God’s representative on Earth, the Pope,
had always lived his life so full of hope
that when he reached the Pearly Gates,
he’d receive a welcome from his mates:
God himself would shake his hand
as all the saints struck up the band.
So, finally when his end was nigh
he thought, “Great, I’m about to die.”
When at last he shut his eyes,
he found that his beliefs were lies.
No afterlife, no heaven, no celestial choir,
no Christ, no Hell, no eternal fire,
no seraphim nor angels on the wing,
absolutely nada, not a fucking thing!
The Sad Story of Judah, Tamar, Er and Onan
Judah’s wife, a Canaanite, gave birth to a fine son.
“His name?” the priest asked Judah. But he couldn’t think of one.
Judah’s wife, a stutterer, stammered “Um, er, I th-thought…”
“OK,” said the holy man, “let’s call him Er for short.”
He might have been an Erwin without his mother’s stammer
and his life could then have been one of endless glamour.
But he felt a total nebbish and so just had to lump it
when married off to Tamar, and not his favourite strumpet.
Though diffident by name, Er showed no hesitation
when it came to manly things, mainly copulation…
In fact, Er was into erring, he relished being errant.
He loved a shag, but not the fag of ending up a parent.
To err was in his nature; it was in his DNA.
Nobody could blame him, that was just his way.
Meanwhile, dear old Yahweh, looked down on him in horror,
“He’s acting like a reprobate from the city of Gomorrah!”
Yahweh made his mind up to give Er his full attention,
deciding that this ne’er-do-well would never draw his pension.
Onan, Judah’s other son, is known to have a history
that’s heavily distorted, and something of a mystery.
Some overzealous exegetes invented a mad fiction
insinuating Onan enjoyed a dread addiction…
Judah, to preserve his line, decreed that his son Onan
had to service Tamar: Onan had to get a bone on.
But Onan had no reason to put Tamar up the spout,
for he had bigger fish to fry, which required him to pull out.
Siring Er a son post-mortem simply wasn’t fair
as Tamar being childless meant he’d be Judah’s heir.
Looking at it that way, the choice was a no brainer!
To avoid a bagel in her oven meant being an abstainer.
So, at the crucial moment, “he spilt his seed upon the ground.”
This famous phrase encouraged a rabbinic mob to hound
poor Onan because his chosen route to detumescence
became a pastime much enjoyed by boys in adolescence.
Yet, he should go down in history as the first one to instruct us
in the contraceptive, cunning stunt of coitus interruptus.
But fulminating Yahweh, unimpressed by Onan’s trick
quickly changed him to Anon for “misuse of his dick”.
See Genesis 38: 3-10
