nihil nisi bon-mot

Once again, nightquill has crossed swords with the massed Losers of the Washington Post's Style Invitational.

This week's contest was a challenge to taste as well as humor: writing poems on people who died in 2005. Now you can play "second-guess the Empress": did she pick our best to see the glorious inky light of print?

Honorable Mentions, in the print edition of today's Post:

When Admiral Stockdale came to bask
In Heaven's golden glare,
I'm sure he had no need to ask
What he was doing there.

A single year has never claimed such literary pillars!
What stock have we remaining of Saul Bellows? Arthur Millers?
And Miller married Marilyn! and Bellow, 84,
Became a father; holding out a hope forevermore
To every brainy little boy named Goldberg or Shapiro
Of turning out a sexual, not just artistic, hero.

Semi-honorable mention, published on line only:

Who'd build a house for Frank Lloyd Wright?
Cook Wolfgang Puck a mussel?
For only he would dare recite
A verse for Nipsey Russell.

Relegated to the squalid shantytown of self-publication:

Cardinal Sin
No longer means
Salvation in
The Philippines.

If ever he had cause for guilt,
He turned to better things;
And now, just like the cars he built,
DeLorean has wings.

Heaven's host assembled sits,
Convened by Carson's biggest Fan,
But Johnny tinkers with his skits
And waits for Ed McMahon.