Let's All Write Bouts-rimés: Poem the Final- Judy

Way back before the Pleistocene Epoch, back in the haziest mists of time, I started a project where I would work through Ron Padgett's book A Handbook of Poetic Forms.  The project was to write a poem for every form represented in the text.  I got through the end of the letter 'B.'

To be fair, I never willfully stopped doing the project and, therefore, in my own mind was still doing the project.  However, I think it was about a year ago when I first mentioned the Bouts-rimés topic.  I received a great deal of response from people who wanted me to write a poem using their list of rhyming words and, being a softie, I chose to attempt to write one for everyone who participated.  Then, time continued to march on.  I wrote a few and, a few months later, wrote a few more.  And then...

So, I intended to write the remaining poems and then continue the project, but found that one of the remaining two (I think) has disappeared.  I knew the book in which I had placed the list, but it was no longer in that book.  That was my friend Kari's list of suggestions.  I apologize, but we are moving on.  If I find that list in the future, I will write the poem and post it, but for now I have written a poem for Judy's list.  After this, we move on to other forms.

For some reason, I kept thinking of Flashman when meditating on these sets of rhymes and decided to pick the narrative voice of a man fleeing from serving his country in battle.

Called from the comfort of my duvet
to Her Majesty's service in parts near Bombay.
Patriotic sentiment precludes a "no way."
I packed my essentials and fled in dismay
with a rucksack of Talisker and set for croquet.
Took discretion for valor, then took the highway
in hopes from my duty that road would convey
my heart and my hind where they might be okay
lest on some far battleground they should decay.
My hope for a future rose like a soufflé.
All duty to country I felt I've prepaid
by ensuring my life for a henceforth of todays.
Laying low, unobserved, on outlaying roadways,
I'd be better employed sniffing future bouquets.

Let's All Write Bouts-rimés: Poem the First- The Ardingers

As I said before, Bouts-rimés is a collaborative form in which one gets a series of rhymes from another person and crafts a poem from them.  Alexandre Dumas, père, compiled a whole book from famous poets of the day with the same set of rhymes.  It can be both a delightful and extremely tricky form.

I am finding a natural tendency toward poems for a precocious but dark child.

I sent out the call to my readers for a set of rhymes and found myself crippled by the choices.  I instead have chosen to do all of them.  Here is the first in the series from the set of rhymes sent by my good friends The Ardingers :

The Dissolute's Dirge
by Paul Mathers

My liver I keep in a sog
for my pneuma's in a bit of a bog,
a condition that circumstance fathered,
to ammend it I shan't be bothered.
Existence is best viewed through fog
to keep horrors from filling your log.
Savoir faire one can glean from my story:
Be the amaurotic in the observatory.
For in a world where the dog eats the dog,
I would sooner make camp with the frog
who on trifles and pests will grow fatter
and not give a rip towards the matter.
So exhausting the state of agog.
To the alehouse for a measure of grog!