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Limerick Showcase
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A chance for players to showcase whole limericks for amusement & edification. Standard winning move for the purposes of euthanasia.
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Remember, remember, remember!
That day on the fifth of November
When gunpowder, treason
And Popish malfeason
Are why we must traitors dismember.

There was a young lady called Hannah
Who had the effect of a spanner
With no ifs or buts
She could tighten men's nuts
In a frankly incredible manner.

I've been a wild rover, I fear
But the end of my roving draws near
For I'm clean out of dosh
And I drink orange squash
'Cos my insides were ruined by beer
The first valve is pressed firmly down
And the music it moves round and round
Then it comes out from here
In a tone bright and clear
(It began as a lip-farting sound)

I've a love of the tenor trombone
And in that I don't think I'm alone
For some it's The Valve
That's their musical salve
It's The Slide that puts me in The Zone

Eye of Newt, Wing of Bat, Leg of Frog
Anne of Cleves, John o' Groats, Hair of Dog
Add lemon 'til sour
Then stir for an hour
Drink down fast, and then run for the bog
[Stevie] Have three Bravi on me
I wrote this following my first reading of Watership Down - many moons ago ..
Intuition, sixth sense, second sight
Thus the panic began before light
An atmosphere foreign
In their once homely warren
Became reason enough for their flight

Infra Red Spectroscopy
From messing with quantums we glean
That symmetrical modes can't be seen
Asymmetrical change
Dipole moments derange
And a sharp peak's revealed to the keen.

Raman Spectroscopy
A laser makes the bonds vibrate
Just like infra red does. But wait!
With a polarized glow
Only symetric modes show
Which chemists find a useful trait
Because when both techniques are used on the same sample it can remove the need for dicking around with bond extinction coefficients and make structural analysis a matter of mental ball-and-stick topography. Result!

"Let's go to the ice-cap" he said.
"We're British! We can't end up dead!"
Well, the ice got a grip
So we cut up the ship
What we needed by then was a sled.

A question both deep and profound
Is whether a circle is round
In a paper by Erdös
Written in Kurdish
A counterexample is found
 Not mine, this one, of course
Which reminds me of this mnemonic one I wrote more than a decade ago:

How I wish I could calculate pi!
Assess twice the ambit. Simplify:
Bisecting through
Canceling two
As the diameter thou divide by.
[CdM] Tremendous!

Möbius bands
A mathematician confided
That a Möbius band is one-sided
And you get quite a laugh
If you cut one in half
For it stays in one piece when divided.
(Anon)

A mathematician named Klein
Thought the Möbius band was divine
He said "If you glue
The edges of two
You get a weird bottle like mine."
(Leo Moser)

I do hope Attila the Stockbroker doesn't mind me posting one that he's just put on Facebook:

A smelly, stub filled old ashtray.
Badly kept Greene King IPA.
Grim, pinched-face psychosis.
Severe halitosis.
That's Faragery in the UK.

A bunch of editor-types with what I correspond came up with a deadly set of alternative lyrics for 'God Save The Queen' but about Oscar Pistorius. It started...
Oscar Pistorius
Short through a door for us
Girlfriend injurious...
I don't think it got an ending because we all decided we would all go straight to hell if we finished it.
Keep up the good work, chaps.
oh, and
Inspired by penelope and other editor-types

An athlete of deeds meritorious,
Whose life had been largely victorious,
With blind gunshots multiple -
Homicide Culpable -
Guilty of acts most inglorious

I like the # one.
Soon frostnights again

During winter we must feed the birds
They are hungry and come in great herds
They love sunflower seeds
It fills most of their needs
And the pay us with white little turds...
And they pay us with white little turds...
I'm just going out for a while
Said Oates, with a hint of a smile.
He's a good chap, I thought
He'll do what he ought
With a stiff upper lip, that's the style!
I once had a highly trained moggie
Who could do anything that a doggie
Could – but it wouldn't.
'Cos cats know they shouldn't.
It's a core part of their psychologgie
That miserable cur, Ebeneezer
Thought Christmas a costly purse-squeezer
Then four ghosts in his sleep
Showed him how being cheap
Made him quite an unpopular geezer.
What's red, fat and goes "ho-ho-ho"?
One's stuck in my chimney, you know
It's blocked up the flue
And between me and you
This prevents proper draw and smoke flow
The stockings were hung up with care
But we snuck down and hid (on a dare)
At eleven o'clock
Me and sis got a shock:
Uncle Frank and our Mam tot'ly bare.
There's a sleigh on me lawn, full of tat
And a bloke lying near, red and fat
It certainly gives pause
To think Santa Clause
Could arrive quite as plastered as that
Two tramps spend a long time in wait.
"Let's go," one says, "Godot is late."
"I'm sure that he'll come,"
Says the other, face glum.
They don't move, but continue to wait.
His codename is Ack-Ack Macaque
He's teamed with a newspaper hack
He's battled the Hun
With booze, cuss and gun
I reckon he's earned his own plaque
Please guide me, by thy steadfast hand
A pilgrim through this barren land
You're mighty, I'm weak
Deliv'rance I seek
And food evermore's what I've planned.
Tom Cromwell served Henry (mark 8)
Juggling life, limb and law for the state
Though for long years traduced
His repute's now been spruced
- for the next episode, we can't wait!
An Easter limerick:
I remember the stable that night
God's birth was a hideous fright
If you crossed him you'd choke
And he'd think it a joke
But we've got him nailed up now, all right.
A very disrespectful, and potentially offensive retelling of the Easter story - hell, here I come (not that you exist). You have been warned!

Hidden textWe killed him, then waited a minute / Took him down, found a tomb, stuck him in it / Rolled a boulder in front / And then somehow that **** / Survived! Now that's magic, innit!
Unashamedly stolen from my Aunty Maureen, who has Scottish parents.
A young fellow called Cholmondeley Colquhoun
Once kept as a pet a babolquhoun
His mother said, "Cholmondeley
Do you think it quite colmondeley
To feed your babolquhoun with a spolquhoun?"
- Inspired by something I read

Boobs boobs boobs, boobs boobs boobs, boobs boobs boobs
Boobs boobs boobs, boobs boobs boobs, boobs boobs boobs
Boobs boobs boobs, boobs boobs
Boobs boobs, boobs boobs boobs
Boobs boobs, boobs boobs boobs, boobs boobs boobs boobs.

To write dirty limericks you need
Dictionaries in which you will read
Dirty words that will match
A word rhyming with "snatch"
If you’re filthy like us you’ll succeed.
But if you're a bit of a cock
With a mind like a smelly old sock
Your feeble endeavour
To seem bright and clever
Just gives us more reason to mock
These boobs just keep running and running
As Stevie writes verse oh-so-cunning
As cool as ice cubes
He delivers his 'boobs'
And his final-line scansion is stunning
Enough of this outrageous hammery,
It makes me all stuttery-stammery,
I blush to my nose,
And just stare at my toes,
When the topic's unceasingly mammary.
(Sorry, wasn't very bold there...)
Not original, but an old favourite because of its sheer silliness:

Said the vicar of Old St Paul's
"Concerning these cracks in the walls,
would it be faster
to use quick-dry plaster?"
And the Bishop of Leicester said "Balls!"


The message came in bit by bit
It was clear things had gone all to shit
The chap on the wireless
Was tapping out, tireless,
Dit-dit-dit, dah-dah-dah, dit-dit-dit.
My name is Mouldy Muldoon
And I am a shade of maroon
That is kind of green
So it's never been seen
But you will discover it soon.

OR

My name is Mouldy Muldoon
And I am a shade of maroon
That is kind of green
With an opulent sheen
That shines with the light of the moon!


It's Monday: can't get out of bed.
It's Tuesday: A gas bill that's red.
It's Wednesday: a bruise.
It's Thursday: blown fuse.
It's Friday: Hooray! Still not dead!

A nod is as good as a wink
To a blind horse. But pause now and think
All this nodding and winking
And unseemly blinking
Could drive the poor creature to drink

Trainspotting in my teen years
Once was a cause for some tears
I was hit by a train
Then a tram, and again
By a linesman who boxed my poor ears

Humidity's getting me down
Every evening the Sun plunges down
But the air remains hot
And I find that it's not
So much sleep I get, more like I drown
A friend mailed me this one:
There was a young lady of Niger
who smiled as she rode on a tiger.
They returned from the ride
with the lady inside
and the smile on the face of the tiger.

If Godot eventually comes
He'll rescue this pair of old bums
They despair of their fate
Yet hope while they wait
That Godot next day surely comes.

Dad, into night, do not go gentle
For all who have made that descent'll
Avow that, old-aged,
Against dusk they raged—
Our desire to stay's fundamental
I don't think I'll never recall
What I've not had nor won't miss at all
I'm torn, yet I'm not
About unthings not got
I'm not running before I can't crawl.

When I attain 26
Balding, with fuses to fix,
Will you grow old with me?
For the best's yet to be
And you can't teach an old dog new tricks

I believe I shall rule the land
And you shall be my right hand
And naught will us keep
In our union deep
For our story's just a one-night stand

A swimmer I wish you could be
So sleek like the kings of the sea
But yet naught again
Shall our closeness maintain
Glory's short-lived dear, you see?

I a time can recall
Where you and I stood 'neath a wall
O'erhead the shots hissed
While you and I kissed
With no fear inside us at all

Perhaps we are nothing my dear
And nothing surrounds us I fear
In which case now flee
This solipsism with me
Heroism's a lousy career

A friend posted this one somewhere else
A prudent young schoolgirl named Lucy
who wanted to do something juicy
along with a dude
undressed herself nude
and stepped in a juice-filled Jacuzzi

There once was a farmer from Polk
Who made a trade for a pig in a poke
Though what I cannot divine
Is word he'd butchered the swine
When the sack held no pig ... what's the joke?
A pilot I know from Phuket
Had Baked beans but had to regret
As this enormous fart
broke t'propeller apart
Now he's feeding a biofuel jet
 (Hi Geo, nice to see you are on the air again!
I really don't quite understand
How matters got so out of hand
That even the Pope
Said that he couldn't cope
When Jeremy Clarkson got banned.
Approaching the end of November
I find that it's time to remember
The uncle I hate
And a cousin (or eight)
That I really would like to dismember
'Tra-la-la!' I declaimed, and 'Tee hee!'
'Woo-hoo!' and 'Ha-ha!' and 'Yippee!'
Then later, 'Oh, cock!'
Once I'm not on the clock
And need no more simulate glee
Time to rewrite a Limerick from October 2014:
An athlete of deeds meritorious,
Whose life had been largely victorious,
Fired on quite regardless -
Dolus eventualis -
Guilty of murder inglorious
As a brief diversion from lecherous Limericks, a lecherous Shakespearian haiku:
My Love doth me wrong—
But still, 'tis better than not
doing me at all.
Time for a Christmas carol:
Away in a manger, a child
Was born and grew up meek and mild
But when he turned thirty
He got rather shirty
And was nailed up for making folks wild.

We three kings of Orient are
With these gifts we have come from afar
Myrrh, frankincense, gold
For we have foretold
By the light of yon wandering star.
[Raak] GMTA. It's terrifying that that was 3 years ago though!
Slightly mixed carol(s)

In the city of David, a shed
And in it a crib for a bed
A mother so mild
JC was her child
And there she laid down his sweet head.

I am some hours behind;
So if you like, pay me no mind.
But it is with great cheer
I say Happy New Year!
(But then it's back to the old grind...)
This is all getting too nice. So -
I practise all day on trombone
My neighbour does nothing but moan
But were I Glenn Miller
I'd go round and kill 'er
'Cos the dopey old bat's on her own. My neighbours are actually very nice.
My neighbour's a lousy tromboner
He thinks that I'm just an old moaner
His playing I'd pardon
Were he Jack Teagarden
Instead of a bitter old loner I don't live next to Rosie, and my neighbours are also very nice, and don't play the trombone.

To my right there's a lousy tromboner
To my left, a trumpeting moaner
I'm stuck in the middle
With the old plywood fiddle
flerdle sold me for forty five Krona

I also practise the piano
Which is made from string and Meccano short "a"
'Twould not be ungallant
To say that my talent
Ain't mini or micro; it's nano.

That blasted tromboner's now tinklin'
A piano. That bugger's no inklin'
He's a Les Dawson bum
When he's not George Chisholme
As for me my ear drums are a-wrinklin'
I hasten to add all persons referred to in this limerick are fictitious and that any resemblance to persons living, dead or undecided is a most unfortunate coincidence. Besides, my tromboning pianist doesn't know anything about meteorology or chemistry. He's an insurance salesman and he lives in Chipping Sodbury.
(Stevie) Now that is an insult. Local names for it include Sodding Chipbury or Chips and Sod All, according to my Bristolian informant.
I thought I might repair my watch
But my skills made the job one big botch
All the springs, cogs and wheels
Scattered under my heels
It seems I'm a watch botch sasquatch.

There once was a milkmaid named Gretchen
To say she was fugly 'twarnt stretchen'
She eloped to Nantucket
With her beau [and a bucket]
So he'd have him something to retch in. (my apologies, it's the best I could come up with on the spur.)
I practice my trombone inside
But I do leave the doors open wide
So the the neighbours can squiz
And see what a whizz
I'm at doing strange things with my slide
Dear god has someone stuck a dart in
Pablo's backside? No! He's startin'
His etudes and scales.
Amateur dentristry pales
To that squealin' and screechin' and fartin'
A mate of mine played the trombone
Down the line, from an old telephone
The sound, like a fart,
Went straight to my heart
Like a dying man's sad final groan
[Stevie] Actually not a bad description of my teenage trombone playing
When the U.S. of A. starts to vote
There's hardly thinking a mote.
Electing a chump
Such as Donald J. Trump
Is hardly of a good note.
He's not been now for four hundred years
There are no more Othellos or Lears
And Wives can't be merry
For they come just to bury
The rest is all silence and tears
A hoary old campaign designer
Who never thought anything finer
Than mud-slinging crusades
Has done it in spades:
A Trumpedo has sunk the Cruz liner
They won't rub their hands now in glee
Both Democrat and GOP
For on Hallowe'en
They must choose between
The Devil and the deep blue C
For an hour and a half, at a loss,
I lingered in Three Mile Cross
I consumed more than one
In a pub called The Swan
But I'll soon be back home to the boss.
An old one, but a favorite
There once was a Scot from Loch Fyne
Who married three wives at a time.
When asked, "Why the third?"
He replied, "One's absurd,
And bigamy, sir, is a crime!"
One from ISIHAC, with Tim Brooke-Taylor having to field the last line :)
I once saw a crime that was heinous
The first act of Coriolanus!
Some mischievous joker
Picked up a large poker
Which really did not entertain us!
This was from Orange MC about 15 years ago, written by Thos, blamelewis, Simons Mith, Drewsxpa, and myself. It might be the best single limerick line I ever wrote (he says, modestly)

Greetings to you, one and all
Welcome to the Cheesemongers Ball!
We've plenty of crackers
Supplied by our backers
The Tedbiscuits, with their son Saul
And here's another from that golden age (by me, pen, Raak, Néa, and Thos), featuring a candidate for Thos's best line ever.

I like that my women be strong
Said Tarzan, who wore a sarong
If they can't climb a creeper
I'm not gonna keep 'er
My life is vine, women and thong
The Ig Nobel prizes are also summarised in Limerick form. Among many I liked this one:
It repeats every word that you say,
But after a tiny delay.
A more irksome machine
Has never been seen.
It's SpeechJammer. Buy one today!
[SM] Thanks for the note. The Ig Nobel limerick standard is appallingly high. I wonder who does them?
I once wished my daughter had listened
To advice, but instead her eyes glistened
With adult desire.
Now her boyfriend's a sire,
And on Sunday my grandson gets christened
Our Boris is back in the saddle
While Gove's up shit creek with no paddle
And so come what May
At the reckoning day
They will meet their fates in the Eubattle.
A mathematical one I got from years back, no idea where from:

6,129,872,700,011.97425683

Six trillion one hundred and twenty
Nine billion eight hundred and seventy
Two million and seven
Hundred thousand eleven
Point nine seven four two five six eight three
Who wrote this one?
In the Highlands when new moon is full
Little lassies will give a hand pull
After while they will suck
And if you are in luck
You may mount them in kilts made of wool.
Bism, that's from Martin Gardner.
Stop me if you've heard this one
I bought the new iPhone today,
Which shortly filled me with dismay
For its sister, the "Six",
Does all the same tricks,
But with headphones that you won't mislay.
[Marc] You wrote it here, Marc. I see that it's down to your usual standard. Do you think you will ever be able to make a post on this server that is not smutty or misogynistic or lewd?
[Pen] You are probably right and I will never be able to reach your supreme level. It is a pity though that you don't post more than once a year or so... This is yours from 2012 by the way:
On the chest of a barmaid from Sale
Were tattooed all the prices of ale
And on her behind
For the sake of the blind
Was the same information in braille.
So that was my forty-ninth summer
And winter draws on, what a bummer!
With each passing week
A new joint will creak
And my toes will get number and number.
From the limericks on this site, a collaborative effort by [penelope], myself, [Pablo], [Rosie] and [Stevie] in line order. (I modded my line a bit to improve the scansion.)

There was a young man out of Rhyl
Whose gigantic restaurant bhyl
Came from scoffing ten courses.
He thereby endorses
Credit card use at the thyl.
But now you've ruined the Welshness by taking out the distinctive double L, you Phyllistine!
I have a heart of Fflint... and don't call me Phyllis!
[Marc] - That barmaid limerick is older than me; my dad fished it out when I was a teen as an example from his youth (though the scansion here was busted by the unnecessary addition of "all" in the second line). The Highland one is an ugly thing, the putative author having chopped the indefinite article twice to make it scan, rendering it into something other than English. Filthy is OK, but such works have to fit the scheme without turning into furbish, surely? Otherwise we have a Stuffed Owl.
[Stevie]I have never claimed to be the author of the Highland one. If I remember correctly it was sent to me years ago from a friend with his roots in Dundee, Scotland. Nevertheless it gave you the opportunity to show off as the smartass I think you are. The only reason that I wanted to remind Pen of her contribution The barmaid was that some might think it is also misogynistic in one way or another. However here is another old one for your critique:
My wife is a Lady, I think,
Cause her knickers are narrow, and pink
On the rim there is lace,
On the bottoms a trace,
Of the finest of beaver and mink.
[Mark] If you read again with your eyes open you'll see that at no point did I attribute "the highland one" to you. I just said, rightly, that it had been turned into near gibberish by eschewing the needs of the language it was written in in order to make its "joke". This is one of the criteria laid out for bad poetry in The Stuffed Owl; an anthology of bad verse. In point of fact I didn't think the idea was strong enough to warrant the energy needed to write it, but I never blamed you for it.
I did out penelope as not the author of "tattooed barmaid", with the same comment I made the last time it surfaced in the wild.
Buttinski here

Us humans are all just the same
Always too ready to flame
When it comes out
That it's us that you doubt;
And then it's no longer a game.

Written by me, full disclosure/responsibility/etc.
I found myself burdened with cash
So I gave BDSM a bash
Now my body's a mess
I've got eighty quid less
Just like any old night on the lash.

Who is this Pep Guardiola
Is he fielder, batsman or bowler?
He can speak Catalans
And write in Gill Sans
And will not touch Coca-Cola.
"It could be the starter-ring gear"
Screamed the young AA man in my ear
"Either way I'll just go
And give you a tow
Off this M1 on-ramp*, never fear!"

* - Newport Pagnel Service Area, Northbound, 1984
"I've checked, and you've no magic wand
So I don't think that you will abscond
Since you're fastened down tight
Under my laser light
I expect you to die, Mr Bond!"
"How on earth did you ever get free?
Never mind, makes no difference to me.
Fort Knox is your tomb
You're about to go "boom"
Mr Bond as you clearly can see"
"Damn and blast, you escaped once again!
This is getting too much. What a pain.
Please throw Mr Bond
In that bottomless pond
Wrapped in twenty five feet of steel chain!"
Double post. How strange. Removed.
"Impossible! Free again! You!
Dripping wet, Mr Bond, it is true
But otherwise no
Ill effects are on show
I assume it's the work of old 'Q'!"
"No more "watch" Mr Bond, no more "keys"
I'll take both your "shoes" if you please
And your "belt". And your "Hat".
And your oiled "cricket bat"
Time to die. We are done with strip tease."
"And now into the chamber you go
Where two quarts of nitro will blow
As the cyanide gas,
Whirling blades and ground glass
Make an end to you Bond, don't you know?"
"Hahaha! There Bond lies burned and torn
No escapes. No more jokes old and worn.
Wait? What's this I see
On his singed laund-ery?
It's a tag. And it reads 'Jason Bourne'!"
"I'm off 'fore this "Bourne" chap comes round
For he's not dead, just stunned I'll be bound
And when he finds out
Who did this, I've no doubt
My Germanic bonce he will pound."
[Stevie] Congrats, and do have a cup of tea. I think you've earned it :-)
Take "The", [proper name] and a filler
For the title of your Ludlum thriller.
Then on to the plot
Which is mostly rot
With a secret, three spies, and a killer.
The chuck key was here, in the drill
But the chuck's gone AWOL from the quill!
Events now play Hob
With my "ten minute job"
Wasting time, adding cost, sapping will
The election's past, over, and gone,
Spoils now go to those hangers-on
Who, Jan 20, in pomp,
Will jump in the swamp,
Where the biggest hippo is Don!
Don said, "It's quite easy, you see:
My team must just resemble me:
White, male, and can shoot,
Or has lots of loot,
And lacking a college degree."

Did I read clearly that the Pres-to-be has put a munchkin in a top role?

Jingle bells, jingle bells all the way
Oh what fun! That's what people will say
Wearing red Christmas slacks
With my shotgun and axe
In my festive one-horse Christmas slay
While I rode on the LIRR
I recalled that there once was a bar
As part of the train
Where we'd reduce the pain
Of commuting while smoking (low tar)
While I rode on the LIRR
An announcement was heard, "Goodly DL"
"Would there happen to be
"The occasional Stevie
"As passenger, or part of the PL?"

Terribly contrived, but happy new year anyway

"Goodly DL"? Can't figure that out. Sorry.
Prof Stanley Unwin mate - "Goodly daylode", a general greeting.
Ah. A bit obscure for anyone not of my age I'd think. I plugged that in as my final answer but couldn't figure the etymology for the life of me.
Three cheers for Mahendra Singh Dhoni
A professional, sir, not a phoney
When batting at cricket
Or keeping the wicket
It's quite clear that he stood alone-y.
Hip hip, hooray! (thrice)
From MCIOS, a couple of days ago, with yours truly, Projoy, Software, Stevie and Chalky providing the lines:

The "Dark Lady", for whom this is written,
Is the one with whom I've become smitten.
Her sensuous manner
With torque wrench and spanner
Transformed my once shy to twice bitten.
Just presenting Alternative facts on an Alternative meter with some Alternative rhymes on an Alternative language
Mister Putin is truly an arse
And fat Donald is playing a farce
Mrs. Theresa May
Like Frau Merkel’s okay
Only Barack and Hill’ry are stars!
Just parlaying my good cheer. (belated Greetings for this new year, Marc.)
Though the Bourgeois was played like a chump
Knowing the game was rigged in the swamp
When the ante got raised
On he soldiered, unfazed
He called ... and game's won with the Trump.
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