Parody: Brian Allgar, ‘If you can …’

If you can make her laugh, that’s half the battle,
Especially if she’s married to a bore;
If you can make her glad to be your chattel,
Yet treat her like a lady, not a whore;
If you can undo bra-straps single-handed
While murmuring enticements in her ear;
If you can make her think you’re being candid
When telling her just what she wants to hear;
If you, my friend, can easily persuade her
To sample things she’s never tried before,
Or if she sighs with pleasure when you’ve laid her,
And smiles as you sneak out by the back door;
If you can tolerate her endless prattle,
(And never tell her “Darling, get a life”),
Her gossip and her foolish tittle-tattle—
Then you’re the bastard who seduced my wife!
*****
Brian Allgar writes: “Written with a particularly amoral friend of mine in mind, although I am glad to say that the narrator is not me.”
Brian Allgar was born a mere 22 months before Adolf Hitler committed suicide, although no causal connection between the two events has ever been firmly established. Despite having lived in Paris since 1982, he remains immutably English. He started entering humorous competitions in 1967, but took a 35-year break, finally re-emerging in 2011 as a kind of Rip Van Winkle of the literary competition world. He also drinks malt whisky and writes music, which may explain his fondness for Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony.
He is the author of “The Ayterzedd: A Bestiary of (mostly) Alien Beings” and “An Answer from the Past, being the story of Rasselas and Figaro”, both available from Kelsay Books and Amazon.
Photo: “Making Her Laugh II” by kahala is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.


