Annamaria on Monday
New one to introduce this repeat:
New one to introduce this repeat:
Every Sunday Patricia must blog
On a subject she chooses to flog,
But she cannot today
Her brain's not okay
It's stuck in a terrible fog.
The rest is a repeat I hope you will enjoy;
For
many years now, I have written limericks to let off steam. Perhaps the rigidity
of the form forces me into a more logical place in my brain, which would be
very helpful when I am about to go over an emotional cliff. Limericks have been
a source of glee and groans and, I think, sanity in our house since my husband
and I got together. Though he was always a classy man and often hilarious at
the higher levels of humor, there ran beneath his quick wit an indomitable
sophomoric streak, often fueled by the limericks he memorized in his youth.
Those included many I cannot publish here. According to Wikipedia:
“A
limerick is a kind of a witty, humorous, or nonsense poem, especially one in
five-line anapestic or amphibrachic meter with a strict rhyme scheme (AABBA),
which is sometimes obscene with humorous intent. The form can be found in
England as of the early years of the 18th century. It was popularized by Edward
Lear in the 19th century, although he did not use the term.
The
following example of a limerick is of unknown origin.
The
lim'rick packs laughs anatomical
In
space that is quite economical,
But
the good ones I've seen
So
seldom are clean,
And
the clean ones so seldom are comical.”
Here is one of David’s unclean favorites that
(with two small changes) I think I can safely include. He recited it
whenever anyone mentioned the woman’s name:
There
once was a woman named Harriet,
Who
dreamed she made love in a chariot
With
seventeen sailors
A
monk and two tailors
Dick
Cheney and Judas Iscariot
David
and I once won a limerick contest. We were traveling in Wales and stayed at a
hotel that had once been a castle. The hotel staged a fake medieval dinner each
evening in which, in addition to eating lamb stew with one’s fingers, the
guests were invited to submit a limerick to a contest. The first line was
given. The weekend we were there, the
required first line was: “A Squire with a hole in his shoe.”
The
wittiest Brit wrote took second place with:
"A
Squire with a hole in his shoe
Invented
a substance called glue.
The
source was a horse.
He
boiled it, of course,
And
the smell killed a family in Crewe."
But
to the great surprise of all, David and I – two Yanks, no less – took first
place with this little ditty:
"A
Squire with a hole in his shoe
Was
badly in need of a screw.
With
his tool in his hand,
He
scoured the land,
But
decided a small nail would do."
A
few years ago, while renovating our apartment, an architect appointed by the
building management was delaying our simple project for months and running up
his bill, which we were required to pay. It was costing me sleep as well as
lucre. While I lay awake at night fuming, I preserved my sanity by writing a
cycle of twelve limericks describing how an architect by that SOB's name destroyed
every great building project in history. I give you one stanza of my poem, concealing
his identity by substituting the words “Sir Note:”
To
span an English river of renown,
“Let’s
build London Bridge,” decreed the Crown.
But
then enter Sir Note,
Who
declared and I quote,
“If
we never put it up, it can’t fall down.”
By
the way, I gave him a Spanish-i-fied moniker and
killed him in my second novel—Invisible Country. That character, Ricardo Yotte’ is so hideous
that it is almost impossible to figure out who killed him, since everyone in the village wanted to.
Not
all my limericks have been pejorative. Some
celebrated my friends—their birthdays, their achievements. But I wrote my favorite one just for
fun. Here is my proudest limerick achievement:
In
the subways of Paris, his home
This
elf forever will roam.
So
if you hear “Tick tock.”
Don’t
think it’s a clock
Undoubtedly,
it’s Metro Gnome.
I should apologize, but I can’t.
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