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The Obligatory Limericks Game Reincarnated
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And so it begins....
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I smelled a huge bunch of gerania.
One day, on a barge in Port Said
A floating French letter I spied
It proved hard to read
Mired in spilt seed
From a limb - about three inches wide
When born in the year of Ding Hai
You'll live to a factor of pi
Both you and your daughter
Do things you di'n' oughta
With bears, lions, tigers. Oh my!
Is winter arriving at last?
Well if so, let it soon be the past
I don't like the snow
Or the wind that doth blow
It's all a pain in the arse-t Getting 3 points on my poetic licence
[SW] You couldn't fit an "artic blast" in there, then? As it were.

The Bible will tell you the truth
Of the lives of Eve, Esther and Ruth
But as for the rest (Softers) 3? 11.9 more like.
The scribes merely guessed
And made it all up, yea, forsooth.
A fourteen foot pig in my garden
Let loose smelly gas while 'twas fartin' Coat and hat, I know...
This porcine eruption
Caused total disruption
Before getting loose and departin'
I talk to the tulips; they nod
And wonder "Who is this daft sod?"
I never resent them
'Een with their bent stem
I just let them face the firing squad What a cruel world we live in....
Blindfolded he stood ‘gainst the wall
He smoked his last cigarette with gall
This isn't a joke
When a fond farewell toke
Spoils "blind man's buff" for us all!
The bricks of which Summer is made
Cannot be obtained through the trade (blamelewis) Blind man's puff, shurely?
They are salvaged with care
From the cold wintry air
Come shine we’ll make sure they get laid....
Surrounded by walls of destruction
I stand and await my instruction
As to whether or not
To take a quick shot
Hurrah for careers in construction! a bit abstract but it was stalled for a while yer honour...
He stood there aghast at the sight
For surely this could not be right:
This vision; this... thing!
So shapeless, such bling
Jade Goody, half nude - she looked shite! (apols for vulagarity)
As a planet the earth's rather small (Phil) Did you mean vulvagarity?
So beware, those of you who are tall
With your head in the clouds
It's like wearing shrouds
Now let this be a aware to us all
The snowstorm has blinded my eyes
And the wind whips away all my cries
My limbs have gone numb
This trip really was dumb
Next time it's McDonald's for fries
Pretending I like heavy metal
I bought a uranium kettle
But the weight of the water
Was more than it ought-a
And now I don't feel in fine fettle
The dangerous love of fine words
Is a trait of the geeks and the nerds (Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!)
These anal retentives [UK] <panto> Oh no you're not! </panto>
Resist all incentives
I'd say its strictly for t'birds
You call me a bibliophile
And also a nerd - after while
And maybe a geek
But I know I'm a freak
I can sprint an eighteen-minute mile.
At Redemption (SF convention last weekend) there were a couple of flyers for another convention (Year of the Teledu) with just the first line of a limerick on them. Alas, they never got finished over the weekend. Can we do better? Here is how far they had got when I last saw them:
A teledu of my acquaintance      A Sumatran badger that stank
Has purchased a gaudy conveyance      Lived deep in a hole, dark and dank
It's painted bright blue      . . . . . . . .
And filled with beef stew      . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . .      . . . . . . . . . . . .
A teledu of my acquaintance
Has purchased a gaudy conveyance
It's painted bright blue
And filled with beef stew
Its odour holds all in abeyance.

A Sumatran badger that stank
Lived in a deep hole, dark and dank
Its one pride and joy
.......
Was an old Dinky toy
In fact, a Centurian tank...moving on
I once had a toy made by Dinky
I had five; in Latin that's quinque.
The JCB digger
Five hundred times bigger
Than your or even my pinkie
My 'pinkie' is longer than most are
It's been Michelin-rated as "four star"
And as fingers go
It's something to show
‘cause it’s thin as a worm, how bizarre
It is said that in parts of Japan
You can bat away men with your fan
And if you're a geisha
Who hails from Croatia
Then it's likely your fan is a man
I trow everything that I ween
And I hight what yclept I'd e'er been
And what's more - just hear this
- I rede what I wis
Now get out! @*&#...? I'm purging my spleen!
And with that, things arrived at a halt
'Though they perked up when one added salt
Which proves we're not slugs
Or earthworms, or bugs
We're just perfect, in fact, to a fault
I love you; you're perfect; now change.
I'd rather you did something strange
Tape a worm to your face
Take a fall down from grace
And develop a bad case of mange.
I seem to've developed a tic
Whenever I chew on my Bic®
My tongue starts to bleed
I spill all my seed - oo-er
And, in general, things get on my wick
That's no tic, that is pre-menstrual tension!
You'll have it until you draw pension!
What a woman must bear
In her days of 'bad hair'
Affects all her bits, by extension.
[Rosie] Excellent!

I'm writing a Hip Hop revue
And casting it -- how about you?
The April audition
Takes place on condition (Pj) Thanks.
That by failing you will not sue
When coffee supplies are short
We rush to the gate of the fort
And brew the moat's water
Like lambs to the slaughter
“Manslaughter!” (the cook’s doom in court)
"We're ready for take-off, get strapped"
"If you leave your seat, you'll get slapped"
"From your EasyJet crew"
"And Ryan Air too"
"We prefer pass-en-gers to be trapped!"
While cooking some nice chippolatas
To eat with nice mashed 'potatas'
I found that my beans
Were be-yond my means
It's a good job they came free and gratis.
I just ate a pineapple, chopped
At the end of my meal I just stopped
For I saw half a worm
With a lovely blue perm
It had certainly been 'Photo-Shopped'.
When you fall down a bottomless well
Your speed will increase like hell
You will notice a draught
And a sulphurous waft
With a distictive rotten egg smell
While murd'ring a Chopin Mazurka
I put down the Socialist Worker
PS. [Rosie] Having a flashback?
Retrograde amnesia
In the mines of Silesia
Thank god I was wearing the burka. can't see the relevance of lines 3 and 4, but hey...
Apparently, eggs are the thing
I'd say they are better than bling
When worn round the neck
They look stupid - but heck
Weren't Faberges fit for a king?
That genial chap Barry Cryer
Is a famously infrequent flyer
He mostly takes cabs
To his various rehabs
And his cycling is said to be dire
A friend of a friend of a friend
Has driven me right round the bend
This tenuous acquaintance Gotta gloss over a syllable in tenuous there
Is rather high-maint'ance Gotta gloss over a syllable there too.
And may not survive in the end. (Proj, penpenpenult.) I've killed the bloody lot, mate. :-)
No man is an island, they say
'Though Manxmen might just disagré
They chat and they hug less
And stay shy of Douglas
And they never come out to play
A headache at five is just great
If it leaves by a quarter to eight
But if it should stay
For most of the day
Romance is farfetched for your mate
While painting my room yellow ochre
I received an odd call from my broker
"You're quite in the red"
"You've no green stuff," he said
Now quit playing Black Jack and Poker!
I long for a long-lasting night
Where my fancy can truly take flight
But sadly, I lack
The relevant knack
To get all the works all upright
A lovely young mayor named Ken
Convened the town council at 'ten'
He loudly decreed
"From traffic be freed!"
And may all traffic lights stick at zen!"
Oh, play me those hot ragtime blues!
I'm wearing my new dancing shoes
I'm ready to bop
Or even Hip-hop
And you can all clap from the pews
The happiest one of my days
Was when I stole from the Krays
A vegetable squeezer
An upright fridge freezer
And a bra that clad Modesty Blaise
There once was a lad from old Bristol
Who roamed around town with a pistol
He only shot blanks
For which we give thanks
'cos the whole bloody town's made of crystal.
S,K,SM,R,ISP - awesome
I met a small swami from Dili
Who wanted to move somewhere hilly
I suggested Nepal
Where the hills are so tall
You ascend; you transcend; you go silly.
There was an old codger from Fareham
Who liked women's clothes and would wear 'em
But when he went out
He was struck with this doubt:
Should I take me clothes off? That'd scare 'em!
The antics of Pepe le Pew
Apart from smelling were really quite few
In his amourous pursuits he shows more persistence than Robert the Bruce's spider
Oops...wrong move , wrong game... nix that
The ladies he hounded
[irach] understandable mistake .. given the bizarre scansion in line 2 :-) Think I'll wait for the next one to come along.
[Chalky] You can wait ages for one...
[IS,P] how right you are!
By odour confounded
Their senses. They all joined the queue.
Perambulatoriously
I once ran into Aldous L Huxley
[irach] eek! far-be-it-for-me-mention-the-dreaded-scansion-word ... but hey - I've said it :-)
[Chalky] Hey, it was just clerihew that had got lost.
He looked at me wryly This one works well enough for me
Then stated quite dryly:
[irach] Did you think mine was perambulatoriously? Nah. I meant Perambulatoriously
[Simons] I think Chalky's talking about line 2 of this one which don't follow line 1. My reading of line 1 was as Projoy intended. Let's try and fix it.
Perambulatoriuosly
I ran into Aldous Huxley
He looked at me wryly
Then stated quite dryly:
You're not wearing knickers, I see.
Is that OK?
[ISP, Chalky] If you read mine the first way, irach's line does actually scan (and almost rhyme), to wit:
Perambulatoriously
I once ran into Aldous L Huxley
...so it depends if you think irach misinterpreted the natural stress pattern of my made-up word (which admittedly was difficult to do because in the word perambulator, the second and fourth syls are stressed in a not very limerickish way. Then again, if you were American, then peramulatory would be limericky, but the UK pronunciation would not. Then again, by analogy with notoriously, you might have realised the "correct" stress. Then again, one does naturally attempt to stress "once" in irach's line, before reading "ran". All in all, quite complicated. Maybe I'd better stick to real words hereon.
Muliebrity nudiastertian (look 'em up!)
Improves on my prior male version nudiustertian, actually
But now it's today
[PJ, ISP, Irach] I can quite see that differing the stress pattern can 'make it fit' but I still maintain that 10 syllabubs in a limerick line is too many. Losing the 'L' [as ISPers did] helps :-)
And I fear that I may [Pj] Nope, I still can't make it scan.
[IS,P] I can make it scan - I just don't understand it!
Become subject to gender recursion
The old lady who swallowed a fly
Has now got a gnat in her eye
Her nostrils have fleas
Her ears attract bees
And snakes wrap themselves round her thigh.
The builders are coming today
If they say that, you can only pray
That yesterday's news - I make no apologies.[SW] tricky one to follow which is probably why, once more!, the game has stalled
Doesn't bring on the blues
If so, play a twelve-bar in A.
nice :-)
Forget everything you were taught!
The sum of your knowledge is naught
Now with a clean sheet
Stand on just your two feet
And pretend we have freedom of thought
Forgive me for turning up late
For I know that is rude on a date
I had to make sure
You'd get here before
me, for I'm too impatient to wait. Rather glad to have finally disposed of this one.
[Rosie] Indeed, a week is a long time in limericks. I have stared fruitlessly at this one on numerous occasions. Good finish, I thought, under the circs.
His Highness, George Dubbleyer Bush
Has proclaimed, "We need just one more push!"
To win in the war
For oil, (we need more) (ISP) Not one of my best but cheers, anyway.
Shh! Condoleezza says that's hush-hush making the best of a bad job .. swiftly moving on...
The largesse of old Tony Blair
Has taken a decade to share
But soon he'll step down
For that twat Gordon Brown
But (by that point) nobody'll care!
[UK] Why not "no-one'll care"? Much better scansion.

The Party Political Beast

Once went West, but is now heading East
Its ravenous mouth
Bellows over the South
"Head North for famine from feast"
I flee all political views
In my 'No Idea How To Vote' shoes
I'm not sure where I stand
They're all so bloomin' bland
But one of them will win, so choose.
The cattle I find in my bed
Have deposited freshly-baked bread
And other stuff, too
Think this brown stuff is poo
But at least it's a pat on the head (forgive me)
The hottest of anchovy soup
Reminds me, frankly, of poop.
But cold kedgeree
Has class pedigree
At curing small babies of croup *
* This is not medical advice. The author is not a qualified physician.
Whilst wand'ring alone in The Weald
I made sure to keep my eyes peeled
For Red Riding Hood
Who's up to no good
With Nick Fury, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
When I met with my putative wife
I just could not envision the strife
Of tying the knot
With a 'she' who was not
So I dumped him and got a new life .. moving swiftly on
The diaries of Siegfried Sassoon
Are best played on the contra-bassoon
Or otherwise said
(Preferably, read)
By the light of a silvery moon
I'd rather a dinner of herbs
Than eat koljivo like the Serbs
For basil and thyme
Their taste so sublime
Can be found by most countryside kerbs
There's something suspicious in here
It looks like a worm in my beer
I'd best get it out
(Any forceps about?)
I think I've been sold a bum steer
The natural home of the worm
Is within the Medusian perm
It is annelid heaven
For 24/7
But not during Michaelmas Term
I'm told there is no antidote
To the bite of the Anglican Stoat
But the Mormon Vole's bite
Gives no need for fright
Dabbed with milk from a Methodist goat
The Kiss of the Womanly Spider
Smacks of the real venom inside her
Beware her octet
Or you will soon get
An oscular/eating collider phew. Next!
On a charabanc trip to the sea
We all took our own flask of tea/B>
We topped it with Rum<
And were thus overcome
And woke up in south Tennessee collider? I just met 'er!
The weather has called me away
Now I'm away, I may stay
Til I run out of socks
In my travelling box
'Cos I'm not gonna wash 'em, no way.
How on earth do you undo this knot?
Hard tightened and smeared with green snot,
Which ere long will harden
If left in the garden
The famed Gordian knot it is not
While eating a piece of fresh cod
Which I'd recently caught on my rod
A bone in the fish
That I'd placed in a dish
Had a foot and ten toes, ain’t that odd?
While drinking a rotten peach tea
I was gripped by a deep urge to pee
So much so that I
Let out a great cry:
"Look out, please make way for me!"
I love all the boils of your face
Each pustule, each zit, has its place
Your myriad diseases
And mucousy sneezes
Oh, how they do make my heart race! Well, at least I have tachycardia.
One's encounters with tropical sprue Continuing a medical theme....
One fervently hopes to be few
Typhoid and malaria
Can lay waste an area
There's naught worse than aqueous poo I'll get me coat
Hmmmm. Two 'poo's and a 'pee' in my last six postings. And my wife just bought me a 'wii' for my 40th. Wonder if there's a connection.
I have purchased an elephant's foot
I know not where it to put (ISP) She knows you well. You're a lucky man.
Or up with how much
Or whether and such
‘cause it’s hopping around, won’t stay put
A cuppa, a sit and a bun
When all the paperwork's done
Are you sure you meant "sit"?
Reflect for a bit
Meanwhile, I'll just pour a fresh one
Cash, dollar, loot, pennies, spondoolies
Alas, they're unknown to most coolies (pen) You will not tempt me into testicular references, but watch the 5th line. :-)
For them it's just barter Touché, Rosie ;o)
A note's a non-starter
But useful when shopping in Woollies
The time has arrived - celebrate!
I've worked out how to reincarnate!
I'll be back in a tick
As my new self, Old Nick
Now at last I'll take hold of my fate!
He locked us all into the shed
Looked us straight in the eye and then said:
"You all share one eye!"
"Is it Cyclops I spy?"
Our collective look killed - now he's dead
On slaying a mythical beast
The druids decided to feast
On roast gryphon wings
Or cherubims rings coat!
Or the tail of a ferret at least
Impractical thoughts such as mine
Deal with thou beside me and wine
For this combination
- salacious libation -
The finger writes; having writ, dines.
There's no wind but we sail anyway
So far, we have not left the bay.
Becalmed as we are
We can't go very far
And we'll be in the doldrums all day
Suddenly, there's a hurricane......

We battle 'gainst wind, wave and foam

In quest of a land to call "home"
In the teeth of the gale
We shall always prevail
Till we settle and nevermore roam
I have something between my two legs
So ladies, hang on to your eggs!
Lest fertilisation (Phil) You're dir'y.
Should lead to gestation
You'll look like this pair of beer-kegs?
A girl in a suit can look dapper
Especially one who's a tapper (i.e. tap dancer)
But a man in a skirt
Who chances to flirt
Will never pull more than a slapper. Rather surpising that this one has hung around for so long so I've taken the liberty.
My gosh, it's already July! thank you, Rosie.
I'm late, I really must fly!
Heathrow, here I come
I'll fly to Dum Dum [Calcutta's airport, that is]
I prefer the monsoon to the dry!
If you start, then you've started - that's good.
If you haven't, I wish that you would!
If you're already done
Or perhaps you've just come
To a halt; well, you did what you could.
While turning gold back to base metal
I watched the gold dust neatly settle
Into ingots of lead
So I thought, but instead
I made tea from hot water in t'kettle
Enough is enough is enough
Especially if one's feeling rough
Then enough can return
From which I discern
I'll undress and post this in the bough.
I now have a vision of Raak Hope you don't mind us having a little sport, old bean.
But only if viewed from the back
When viewed from the front an early candidate for Feedline of the Month
(I'll just have to be blunt)
There's something he appears to lack no offence...
Penelope feareth no man
(Please keep it clean, if you can)
For her feminine wiles
May bring forth many smiles
As she's known for her famous can-can
I want you to tell me the truth
Are you Valerie, Mabel or Ruth?
It's so hard to tell
Which is which gel Don'cha know
"My name's Harry, a gender bent youth"
I'm afflicted with six insect bites
I've been tasted by fleas, ticks and mites
'Tis the swamp that they seek
But havoc they wreak
Is something my hygiene invites. Sniffs armpit - poo.
The present is never the present
It's past for cooked geese or cooked pheasant
What the future beholds
Influenza and colds no doubt
Seize the day, for this morning, 'tis pleasant.
Well, Elvis is dead - but alive
At least amongst those who can jive
But why do they wear
So much lard in their hair?
When will Grecian 2000 arrive?
A pack of the very best plugs
Costs more than its weight in hard drugs
They're more galvanising
So it's not so surprising
That they come recommended by Suggs
Are these 'mobile phone' gadgets a fad?
And do i-Pods turn good children bad?
Or are they besotted
Besmeared and tight knotted
This Hi-Tech will drive us all mad.
I look in the mirror. Who's this?
It's me? Your taking the piss!
I was young looking smart
And had mastered the art
Of toilet bowl game "hit or miss"
I once met a nun from Milan
Who wanted to start her own clan
Both Sisters and Brothers
And uncertain "others"
Said "Dad's a McLeod, and me gran". So the whole thing just went down the pan.
A tenor who sang in Modena
Perhaps should have been a bit leaner
With angels he's singing
Adagio, bringing
[Don't quite see why Marc's perfectly reasonable line should stall things for more than a week. It's not like the word 'singing' lacks rhymes …]
Huge joy in his heav'nly arena
... [SM] quite - I'm assuming lack of lean-ness equates to death-ness [angels]. Moving swifterly on ...
I'm not sure if I'll find the time
Or the inspiration sublime
To take part in this game ;-)
In the hope of great fame
And escape from my life's grit and grime
But fame will not change me a jot
At least, I assume it will not
But in the limelight
I will get the rhyme right!
And the scansion, and grammar, and plot.
A young lad from Lytham St Annes
Had a penchant for stealing white vans
Which he'd drive at great speed
While puffing some weed
And swigging cheap beer from its cans
I've just spent a week on the tube
And all rails I have greased with fresh lube
I've cleaned all the tiles
Overhauled the turnstiles
And swept up all hairs of the pube
While studying the surface of Mars
I observed some deposits of tars
Which made me examine
The dictionary to find another word to rhyme
The famine that's caused by catarrhs Tut tut...
Re: Rhymes - I confess that 'famine' was the only word I could come up with. How to keep that in the context of Mars had me completely foxed, which was why I didn't post. I'm sure Chalky had something in mind...
Bob Marley was famous for jammin' for example...
Tho' some thought he always was hammin'
A funk rastafarin [IS,P, pen] True, but in context?
Cussin' and swearin' "This pit that I am in" would have been a perfectly acceptable line, I think. IS,P had it right: if you can't think of a rhyme, then let others have a try, at least until a couple of days have gone by.
He'd go out and sing somethin' damnin'
[Software] Thought I'd wait until the last one was complete before I made a comment ... all I can do is fully concur with IS,P's remark and pennylope/irach/Darren's contributions and, not least, CdM of the Wise Words. Patience, man!
Incredible sights can be seen
From the Moon, if your eyesight is keen
For instance, the earth
Is certainly worth
One pound 'cause it's made from cheese that is green
Whenever you think you are right
Beware if your wife is in sight
You'll probably find
She's hijacked your mind
And is raring to go for a fight
"I may be some time", quoth Oates
"Since Hall's out sowing wild oats"
"So while you may wait"
"Don't stay up too late"
"'cos at dawn you'll be milking the goats."
The gostak's distimmed all my doshes
I've markled the fanturic roshes
My satchbere has jored
(Conquintly misgoared!)
And I've murgle my clep with gooloshes
An ichthyophagous iguana
Attained a true state of nirvana
But the simple brown newt
Is not so astute
And struggles to manage his prana with apologies for hogging
The hog is a curious beast
Remarkably skilled on the piste. [Software] I hate to criticise again so soon, but really! Was 'gooloshes' the best rhyme you could come up with, when 'floshes', 'reswoshes', and even 'underphoshes' were all available. Any one of those would have allowed you to post a line that fit with the rest of the limerick, instead of that nonsense you put down. *shakes head*
... and what's more - your 'murgle' should have been 'murgled' if you really intended to stay true to the tense. :-)
The key to its skill
Oh dear - hr instead of br - schoolgirl error - which I will put right -
Tuj - The hog is a curious beast
CdM - Remarkably skilled on the piste
Chalky Its key to success
Is a long satin dress
With which its drag force is decreased
[Chalky] Not sure that you are right about that. I think murgle is an acceptable past participle in some dialects -- like 'I have stole' rather than 'I have stolen'. And from what I hear, that Channel Islands dialect can be pretty odd at times.
While attempting to extract a square root (Juxt) V. good. (CdM, Chalky) How much more dung are you going to fling at him? It's not as if he's f***** the game up.
My computer had need to reboot
Switch it off, switch it on [Rosie] Check your Spoof Detector batteries :o)
Then delete all the pr0n
Which takes hours - you may need to re-route
[CdM] A fair point. However, Ernie Murgle's tract: Semantic Correlates of Unaccusativity [1973] highlights the formal properties of such lexical derivations. 'Murgle' from the French 'murgler' has evolved into one of the few verbs that can have infinitive objects with agents or gerunds but with a difference in meaning which is left to the speaker/writer. Agree, though, that wibbly dialect can distort the shades of meaning.
(pen) Batteries OK - no spoofery detected. Are you sure yours don't need the recharger. :-)
Whenever you need to recharge [Rosie] If I didn't know you better I'd say you'd had a SOH bypass :-)
Set sail on the Rhone in a barge
Then dangle your toes
In the river that flows
Ça vous fera d'avantage. (Chalky) Yeah, awright missis. :-)
If it's fun and adventure you seek, [Rosie]*coughcoughbadsyntaxcough*
Climb to Kilimanjaro's cold peak
Then put on your skis
Connect to your Wii's
Then launch your surf-kite with a shriek....
When surfing the net please beware
Of sites which promote latex wear
Their corrupting allure
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Want to play? Online Crescenteering lives on at Discord