Archive for the ‘writing’ Category
Here we go again with another rainy and gray day. Spring really wants to make an appearance but for some reason she’s having difficulties. The sun shines brightly for 2 hours a day broken up into 15-minute segments. The problem then becomes when you have a “freezing your ass off” moment every time a cloud goes by. Truthfully Mother Nature is really starting to piss me off.
Now let me get back to the subject. A few months ago, I purchased a pile of old used books which appear to have once been library books. I have books from libraries all over the country. One in particular is a book of limericks (mostly clean) written by some well-known authors and celebrities. See what you think.
By: Lewis Carroll
His sister named Lucy O’Finner,
Grew constantly thinner and thinner,
The reason was plain,
She slipped out in the rain,
And was never allowed any dinner.
💥💥
By: Ogden Nash
It was an old man of Calcutta,
Who coated his tonsils with butta,
Thus, converting his snore
From a thunderous roar
To a soft, oleaginous mutta.
By: Oliver Wendell Holmes
The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher
Called a hen a most elegant creature.
The Hen, pleased with that,
Laid an egg in his hat,
And thus did the hen reward Beecher.
💥💥
By: Rudyard Kipling
There was once a small boy in Québec
Stood buried in snow to his neck.
When asked: “Are you friz?”
He said: “Yes, I is,
“But we don’t call this cold in Québec.”
💥💥💥
As you can imagine I read hundreds of limericks a month but even I was taken by surprise when I read these four. Just goes to show you that even celebrated writers and authors have a real bitch of a time writing limericks. I’m sure that if of you took a few minutes, you could write better stuff than this. Only one of these four showed me something interesting and that was the one by Oliver Wendall Holmes. Read it carefully and see if you spot his clever efforts.
LIMERICK WRITERS RULE!
I stumbled upon a book of limericks some months ago and finally took the time to read through it. Bear in mind that the writers of these limericks are now 57 years older, and many have sadly passed away. Let me bring a few of their limericks back to life if only for a moment for you to enjoy them. These are selections related to our loving pets and other lovable animals.
There was a young man who was bitten
By 42 cats and a kitten,
Cried he, “It is clear
My end is quite near,
No matter, I’ll die like a Briton.
A cat in despondency sighed,
And resolved to commit suicide.
He got under the wheels
Of nine automobiles,
And after the last one he died.
There was a young man from the city,
Who met what he thought was a kitty.
He gave it a pat,
And said, “Nice little cat!”
And they buried his clothes out of pity.
One day I went out to the zoo,
For I wanted to see the old gnu,
But the old gnu was dead,
They had a new gnu instead,
And that gnu, well, he knew he was new.
*****
HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND
I’m a fan of some poetry. That being said I prefer short poetry like haikus or limericks. What I like even more is poetry written by younger children because it seems they write what they’re feeling and that makes it special. In the past I’ve posted poems from younger children collected from English-speaking countries around the world and today I offer four more excellent examples of their work. Their poetry is alarmingly good for their young ages and today’s topic will be Feelings. Enjoy!
By Paul Wollner – Age 7 – United States
I love you, Big World.
I wish I could call you
And tell you a secret:
That I love you, World.
*****
By Mary Flett – Age 9 – New Zealand
A loving arm
Shelters me
From any harm.
That shelteredness
Of kindness
Flows around me.
*****
By Ngaire Noffke – Age 12 – New Zealand
I shook his hand.
I touched him.
How proud I felt.
He said “Hello” softly.
I lost my voice,
But in my mind
I said everything.
*****
by Karen Crawford – Age 9 – United States
Have you ever felt like nobody?
Just a tiny speck of air.
When everyone’s around you,
And you are just not there.
*****
THANKS ONCE AGAIN TO RICHARD LEWIS
Today I’d like to talk about virgins and virginity. Whether we like it or not there aren’t as many virgins available as there once were. Back in the day virginity was prized by almost everyone but I think those days have passed us by forever. I’m reminded of a joke I heard a few years ago that the only virgins left were “ugly third graders”. It was funny at the time but the more I thought about it the more unfunny it became. I’ve been around a very long time and my experience with virgins is damn near nonexistent. With the advent of “soaking” (thanks to those devote Mormons), I’m not entirely sure if the term virginity even applies anymore. Since I admittedly have no clue about virginity, I thought I’d revert to my library for some soulful inspiration. My first choice when diving into my library is always limericks. Here are four limericks concerning virginity or the lack thereof. Enjoy!
💥
There was a young fellow named Biddle
Whose girl had to teach him to fiddle.
She grabbed hold of his bow
And said, “If you want to know,
You can try parting my hair in the middle.”
💥💥
There was a young virgin of Dover
Who was screwed in the woods by a drover.
When the going got hard
He greased her with lard,
Which felt nice, so they started all over.
💥💥💥
There was a young girl from Hoboken
Who claimed that her hymen was broken
From riding a bike
On a cobblestone pike,
But it really was broken from pokin’.
💥💥💥💥
There was a young girl named McKnight
Who got drunk with her boyfriend one night.
She came to in bed
With a split maidenhead –
That’s the last time she ever was tight.
THANKS TO RONALD STANZA
I thought we should visit some children today and read some of their outstanding poetry. Many of these kids are between the ages of 4 and 13 and are from various English-speaking countries around the globe. I find their poetry extremely innocent and pure because they write what they feel without any real awareness of political correctness or the many biases that seem to be everywhere these days. Enjoy them.
🚸🚸🚸
By Sarah Gatti, Age 10, New Zealand
THE SUNBEAMS
It’s a sunny, sunny day today,
There’s not a fluffy cloud in the sky.
The sky’s all blue in a light blue haze,
The orange sun is shining as it stalks along the sea,
And leaves a shiny golden path, for me to walk along.
🚸🚸🚸
By Nelda Dishman, Age 12, United States
TREES
The trees share their shade with
all who pass by,
But their leaves whisper secrets
only to the wind.
🚸🚸🚸
By Jewell Lawton, age 8, Australia
GOD
I wonder
how God lives
in heaven,
when the clouds
seem to be collapsing
like broken birds.
🚸🚸🚸
By Paul Thompson, Age 6, New Zealand
MY FEELINGS
I am fainty,
I am fizzy,
I am floppy.
🚸🚸🚸
THANKS TO MIRACLES & RICHARD LEWIS
A few weeks ago, I posted a number of limericks written in the World War II era. Your response was much better than I anticipated so I thought I’d dig up a few more from that same era to make you laugh and smile all these years later.
A WAVE who had duty at sea,
Complained that it hurt her to pee.
Said the Chief Bosun’s mate,
“That accounts for the fate
Of the cook and the captain and me.”
In the Army and Navy, the toast is
To the talented USO hostess
Who was diddled and screwed
While she tried to conclude
Which service she really liked mostest.
A female Nazi from Bredo
Advances her sinister credo,
By displaying her charms
During air raid alarms,
Inflaming the warden’s libido.
An oversexed G.I. in France
Decided to take just a chance,
But the fairest of foxholes
In Paris are pox holes,
And now he’s got France in his pants.
💥💥💥
WAR IS TRULY HELL
I’m about to do something I promised myself I wouldn’t ever do. Today I’m going to post three truly lewd and disgusting limericks. This is to appease a small number of readers who’ve been begging and bugging me for months to print some filth. It’s not something I want to do but I will do it albeit with a slight twist. As you read these three limericks you may notice a large number of asterisks. It’s part of the twist for you to determine the missing letters. That’s the best I can do for all you pervs out there, so enjoy.
☘️☘️☘️
There was an old man of Corfu
Who fed on c**t-juice and s**w.
When he couldn’t get that,
He ate what he shat –
And bloody good s**t he shat, too.
🌶️🌶️🌶️
There was a young man of Glengarridge,
The fruit of a scrofulous marriage.
He s***ed off his brother
And b***ed his mother,
And ate up his sister’s mis****iage.
☘️☘️☘️
Said an elderly whore named Arlene,
“I prefer a young lad of eighteen.
There’s more cr**m in his larder,
And his p**ker gets h***der,
And he f**ks in a manner obscene.”
💩💩💩
“The poet is a reporter interviewing his own heart.”
Christopher Morely
***
Poetry at times can be beautiful. It can bring tears to your eyes and joy to your heart but as with anything it also has the ability to become something dark and disturbing. I try to make a point of reading samples of poetry from as many poets as I can. Some of the most touching poems are not about happy moments running through fields of flowers with birds flying around, but of deep sadness and pain.
On a regular basis I make purchases from thrift bookstores on eBay. A book arrived at my home recently and I knew reading it was going to be extremely difficult. It’s a selection of poetry written by young people who have had to deal with divorcing parents. The book is titled “broken hearts… healing”, Young Poets Speaking Out, compiled and edited by Tom Worthen, Ph.D. I just finished reading the first half of that book and it forced me to deal with the pain I caused to my own son. Many years ago, I ended a twenty-year marriage and caused a great deal of pain to a young man that we adopted (at age twelve) from a number of state-run foster homes. He deserved better than we were able to give him at the time, and this book brought it all back with a vengeance. Here are two poems that brought tears to my eyes.
TUG OF WAR
Nobody has the life I have,
I can’t imagine if the whole world did.
My parents don’t even talk,
They get to ask who wants us and when.
It is like me and my two sisters are in the middle of everything.
So I hope you don’t have the life I have,
And if you do I’m sorry.
by Beth, Age 11
***
WHERE IS MY DAD?
He comes around like he cares,
but when I was young he was not there.
He has a new family and a wife to love dear,
when I was around he made me feel weird.
When I was alone crying in my bed,
was he there, no, it was mom instead.
When I look at my friends with their moms and dads,
I think if he didn’t mess it up,
Oh, what I could have had!
by Dana, Age 13
***
“Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking.”
by John Wain
***
As I worked my way slowly through the public school system back in the 1960’s I received little or no information or exposure to poetry. It was mentioned in passing in some classes but there never was any serious time devoted to it. It just seems to me that making some poetry (not just the classics) available to younger students might just motivate them to either read more poetry or to write their own. A gentlemen named Richard Lewis, a lecturer on children’s literature and creative writing, apparently agreed with me. In cooperation with UNESCO, he traveled through eighteen English speaking countries around the world collecting poetry written by children between the ages of five and thirteen. Three thousand poems were collected with the best 200 published in his book, “Miracles” published in 1966. I’ve picked out two samples to give you some idea of just how talented many of the youngsters can be when expressing their thoughts in a poetic fashion.
THUNDER
by Glenys Van Every, Age 9, Australia
I hear
the drummers
strike
the sky.
***
SUMMER
by Margaret Bendig, Age 10, United States
Inviting, rippling waters
Waiting for little toes
Hurry, go get changed!
***
After reading a few pages of these poems I had a minor epiphany. These children were not trained in poetry but as they wrote their poems many of them began to look very much like free-verse haiku’s. Having no set restrictions on the length of lines and syllable counting allows the young poets freedom to truly express themselves.
Of course, being the irreverent SOB that I am I decided to write this haiku of mine and take it down a road not normally traveled. It contains some reference to nature but also just a touch of my humor. It’s a poetic mortal sin to write them this way and I’m sure it will tweak the noses of a few people. It’s always fun at times to make some people a little crazy.
*❤️*
NATURAL
by Me, Age: Old
Out of the corner of my eye
A bird sails quietly by.
A flash of golden sunlight,
And I have bird shit on my thigh.
***
SMILE, I DID INCLUDE SOME NATURE
‘The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps . . . so that something
that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash, or thunder in.”
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
Well, welcome back to 2024. I hope you enjoyed the last post concerning Mr. Poe because I certainly did. I thought today I would begin talking about haikus. The current requirements for haikus are a first line with five syllables, a second line with seven syllables, and a third line of five syllables. When I first discovered the haiku I thought the rigidity of this design didn’t make a lot of sense. The more I learned about haikus the wiser I thought I became. Here are two examples of haiku’s written by a gentleman from Japan who is considered the father of haikus, Matsuo Kinsaku (1644-1694). He began writing haikus under the name of Basho in 1672. In Basho’s humble opinion a haiku should be created using a minimum of words to paint a mental picture for the reader. Basho included descriptions of nature in most of his haikus but wasn’t limited to a fixed syllable count. I’m all for free-verse haiku’s but I still find the nature requirement of Basho a bit restrictive. Here are couple of samples of Basho’s haikus published in the 1680’s. See what you think.
Spring rain –
under trees
a crystal stream.
***
On the dead limb
squats a crow –
autumn night.
The structure of haikus as mentioned above were created by two poets, Sokan (1458-1546) and Moritake (1472-1549). In Basho’s opinion their works were terse but failed to adequately evoke nature. Three hundred years later a haiku school, the Soun, was opened celebrating Basho’s free-verse approach. The haiku should be based on content not on the number of syllables in each line. With this I whole heartedly agree.
Here is a little something I discovered recently. It’s shows the form of a free-verse haiku but was simply published as a standard poem. References to nature are gone offering a more interesting take on life, love, and people.
we are the dreamers
we are the dancers
life is the music
love is the song.
For all of you Star Trek fans out there, this was written some years ago by Leonard Nimoy and was included in his book of poetry “A Lifetime of Love” published in 2002.
everyuselessthing.com 