Thanks, Maeve and Kat!

Actually, there were two other inspirations for this, another rhyme from Mother Goose:

(the poem I was talking about yesterday)

MISSING COMMAS

I saw a peacock with a fiery tail
I saw a blazing comet drop down hail
I saw a cloud with ivy curled around
I saw a sturdy oak creep on the ground
I saw an ant swallow up a whale
I saw a raging sea brim full of ale
I saw a Venice glass sixteen feet deep
I saw a well full of men's tears that weep
I saw their eyes all in a flame of fire
I saw a house as high as the moon and higher
I saw the sun at twelve o'clock at night
I saw a man who saw this wondrous sight.

(Which, as a high school English teacher friend of mine pointed out, is still grammatically incorrect even after the commas are put back)

And this song, posted by MMario a good while back: Ha' We to the Other World.

The first presented me with the challenge of writing grammatically correct nonsense, and the second gave me the idea of a whole world presided over by the Man in the Moon (this also gave me a way to make the nonsense list into a narrative).