Really Really Important Poem

Subject: RE: REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT POEM
From: Bard Judith
Date: 08 Nov 05 - 09:55 PM

i opened my eyes and looked up at the rain
and it dripped in my head and flowed into my brain
so pardon this wild crazy thing i've just said
i'm just not the same since there's rain in my head

i step very softly i walk very slow
i can't do a handstand or i might overflow
and all i can hear as i lie in my bed
is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head




Shel Silverstein

Subject: RE: REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT POEM
From: kytrad (Jean Ritchie)
Date: 09 Nov 05 - 01:38 PM

I know how ugly I are,
I know that my face ain't no star-
But gee, I don't mind it
Because I'm behind it;
The one that's in front gets the jarr!

(Melody: Blest Be the Tie That Binds)

Subject: RE: REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT POEM
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 09 Nov 05 - 02:52 PM

Mary had a little car
She drove it very brisk
But Mary didn't care because
She only had her *

Anon, I think, but who knows?

John

Subject: RE: REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT POEM
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 01:52 PM

Mary had a little dress,
The skirt was split in half.
Ans every step that Mary took,
The boys could see her calf.

Mary had another dress,
Split right up the front.
But she didn't wear that one!

Subject: RE: REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT POEM
From: High Hopes (inactive)
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 01:58 PM

Two REALLY, REALLY important poems from Spike Milligan

Return to Sorrento: 3rd Class

I'm going down to the lonely sea,
To the lonely sea and sky.
I'm going down to the lonely sea,
To see if my socks are dry.

There Was

The was a young boy named Sean
who sat on the edge of the lawn
His knees went crack
and he fell on his back
And He regreted the day he was born.

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: GUEST,songster bob
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 02:16 PM

"The breezes, the breezes,
They blow through the treeses.
They blow the girls' skirtses
Above the girls' kneeses.
The college man seeses
And does what he pleases
And spreads the diseases
Oh Jeezes! Oh Jeezes!"

I know that Woody Guthrie knew that poem, because his song, "Old Chicargo" features a verse about the "breeze that tickles the knees of the little chickadees." It's interesting to see the sources of some of the songs we know and love.

Another example is "Union Maid," which does not start like the clean version of "Red Wing," but instead parallels the bawdy parody. It's obcvious which one Woody had in mind when writing that one.

Bob

Subject: RE: REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT POEM
From: ClaireBear
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 02:17 PM

Oh, so many contributions I have failed to make! First, up by the Edgar A. Guest submission, I should have added my suband's favorite:

I'd rather flunk my Wasserman test
Than listen to a poem by Edgar A. Guest.


Here's an old favorite from my childhood:

I shot an arrow in the air.
It fell to earth I know not where.
I lose more damned arrows that way!



And another, from G.K. Chesterton:

TRIOLET

I wish I were a jelly fish
That cannot fall downstairs;
Of all the things I wish to wish
I wish I were a jellyfish
That hasn't any cares
And doesn't even have to wish
'I wish I were a jellyfish
That cannot fall downstairs.'

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: ClaireBear
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 02:18 PM

for suband, read husband, although actually I rather like suband...

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: ClaireBear
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 02:22 PM

And this one's especially good for recitations:


The Leith Police dismisseth us, —
I'm thankful, sir, to say;
The Leith Police dismisseth us,
They thought we sought to stay.
The Leith police dismisseth us,
We both sighed sighs apiece,
And the sigh that we sighed as we said goodbye,
Was the size of the Leith police


See! No typos!

C

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 02:31 PM

I went to see my sweetheart,
Her name is Miss Brown.
She was having a bath,
Said she couldn't come down.
I said please slip on something,
And come down for a tick.
She slipped on the soap
and came down a bit quicker than she expected.

I believe by Noel Coward but someone might correct me.

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: Weasel
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 02:34 PM

Someone mentioned Haiku. The finest haiku ever written is that by John Cooper Clark:

To convey one's mood
In seventeen syllables
Is very diffic

Cheers

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: ClaireBear
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 02:41 PM

Oh dear. Now, those last two (especially together) put me in mind of a certain limericK:

There was a young chap from Bhutan
Who wrote verses that didn't quite scan.
   When they said, "But the thing
   Doesn't go with a swing,"
He said, "Yes, I know, but I always like to get as many syllables into the last line as I possibly can."

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: High Hopes (inactive)
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 02:49 PM

100

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: ClaireBear
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 02:51 PM

No, 101.

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: Jon Bartlett
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 02:54 PM

Little Willie from his mirror
Licked the mercury right off
Thinking, in his childish error
It would cure his whooping cough.
At his funeral, Willie's mother
Calmly said to Mrs. Brown
"'Twas a chilly day for Willie
When the mercury went down."

Bob Graham, perhaps?

Jon Bartlett

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: frogprince
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 03:13 PM

forgive me if I slip in something that I actually love:

Listen to the MUSTN'TS, child,
Listen to the DON'TS
Listen to the SHOULDN'TS
The IMPOSSIBLES, the WON'TS
Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then listen close to me--
Anything can happen, child,
ANYTHING can be.
             Shel Silverstein

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: cptsnapper
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 04:03 PM

Another Ogden Nash

Two nudists from Dover who were purple all over
got munched by a cow in mistake for some clover.

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 04:36 PM

The bee's an energetic soul
Who doesn't hold with birth control
And thus the reason can be found
For all the sons of B's around.

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: Bill D
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 05:04 PM

(pedant alert!)

The Dorothy Parker poem has been posted twice, 8 years apart, and still not gotten precisely.

Ahem:

"I'd rather fail my Wasserman test
Than read a poem by Edgar Guest." (no 'A'...it ruins the scansion)

(/pedant)

Why pedantry? Because...ummmm... mere memory can fail, and the durned WWW/internet leads to C&P proliferation of slight differences from the original.
(Now, I have different versions of some items above, but there is often no known author and thus no one 'authentic' version.)

I learned Dick Greenhaus' poem about bees as:

"The bee is such a busy soul,
He has no time for birth control.
And that is why, in times like these,
There are so many Sons of B's"

Scholars bicker......

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: Stewie
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 07:18 PM

My favourite is Isherwood's 'Common Cormorant' quoted above, but I also like this one:

What a wonderful bird the frog are!
When he stand he sit almost;
When he hop he fly almost.
He ain't got no sense hardly;
He ain't got no tail hardly either.
When he sit, he sit on what he ain't got almost.

Author unknown.

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: Joe_F
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 08:37 PM

Ogden Nash's complete reply to Dorothy Parker was:

The girl who is bespectacled,
She may not get her necktackled,
But safety pins and bassinets
Await the girl who fascinets.

*

Hogamus, higamus,
Men are polygamous.
Higamus, hogamus,
Women, monogamous.

Often attributed to D. Parker, but actually a good deal older.

*

Piss and fart,
Sound at heart.

*

When in danger or in doubt,
Run in circles, scream and shout.

*

Life is a jest, and all things show it:
I thought so once, and now I know it.

*

Suck, squeeze, bang, blow.
Internal combustion makes it go.

*

If I were a cassowary
On the sands of Timbuctoo,
I would eat a missionary,
Coat and bands and hymnbook too.

*

Army version:
Six days shalt thou work and do all thou art able:
The seventh, the same, and clean out the stable.

Navy version:
Six days shalt thou labor and do all that thou art able,
And on the seventh holystone the deck and scrape the cable.

*

Life is ever, since man was born,
Licking honey from a thorn.

*

Always some flakes rise,
But it is correct to say
The snow is falling.

*

Said Sir Christopher Wren,
"I am going to dine with some men.
If anyone calls,
Say I am designing St Paul's."

Said Sir James Dewar,
"I am smarter than you are.
None of you asses
Can condense gases."

Said P. A. M. Dirac,
"I will *not* call it a brac."
Like many Brits,
He had a thing about tits.

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: ClaireBear
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 09:20 PM

Bill: who -- you? pedantic? (I'm not forgetting who corrected my defective "Rivers of Texas" choruses.)

Actually, hugsband Dan never told me it was Ms. Parker, so I'd not known there was a "correct" wording.

Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. (Gosh, I hope I remembered that right!)

Claire

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: Bill D
Date: 22 Apr 09 - 10:19 AM

Oh, I think that's perfect, Claire ☺

(We pedants can be mollified)


------------------------------------------------------
Said Sir Christopher Wren,
"I am going to dine with some men.
If anyone calls,
Say I am designing St. Pauls."

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 22 Apr 09 - 10:33 AM

Candy is dandy,
But liquor is quicker.

Ogden Nash [ I think ]

Dave H

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: Celtaddict
Date: 22 Apr 09 - 01:43 PM

My favorite Shel Silverstein:

Please tell me just the fabuli,
The miraculi,
The gargantua;
And kindly, kindly spare me
All this insignificatia.

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: bseed(charleskratz)
Date: 22 Apr 09 - 09:12 PM

Another from Ogden Nash:

The Lamb


Little gamboling lamb

Do you know where you am?

In a patch of mint

I'll give you a hint--

Scram, lamb


And here's one of my few tries at haiku:



Walking 'neath the palms

Listening to the pigeons coo

Dodging pigeon poop


Charles

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: Celtaddict
Date: 23 Apr 09 - 09:23 AM

Sheesh. Spell check is no use when he made up the word.
Insignificantia.

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: Soldier boy
Date: 23 Apr 09 - 02:02 PM

I wanted to go on the stage
But at acting I simply was rotten.
In pantomine I was the rage
As the hole in the elephants' bottom.

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: Micca
Date: 23 Apr 09 - 02:54 PM

Dr. Bell
fell down the well
and broke his collar bone
Doctors should attend the sick
and leave the well alone.

The origial in the Purple Cow saga was
I've never seen a Purple Cow
with tears my eyes are full
I've never seen a Purple Cow
andI'm a Purple Bull

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
all the Kings horses and all the Kings men
had scrambled egg for breakfast!

I wish I was a littl grub
with hairs around my tummy
I'd climb into a honey pot
and make my tummy gummy

Dewey was the morning upon the First of May
and Dewey was the Admiral down in Manila Bay
and Dewey were the Spaniards eyes
those orbs of black and blue
and dew we feel discouraged?
I Dew not think we dew

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: bseed(charleskratz)
Date: 07 May 09 - 02:38 AM

How to write haiku (from Jon Carroll in the San Francisco Chronicle (condensed and paraphrased from memory)

Think the melody of "Moonlight in Vermont"

DAH-duh-DAH-duh-DAH
DAH-duh-DAH-duh-DAH-duh-DAH
DAH-duh-DAH-duh-DAH

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 07 May 09 - 02:51 AM

I wish I were a little frog,
No taller than the grass.
I'd climb up all the big oak trees,
And slide down on my hands and knees!!!!

Yes it does rhyme!!!!

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 07 May 09 - 02:53 AM

To the tune of "Away in a manger"

The cuckoo is a pretty bird,
She sits in the grass.
With her wings by her side and
Her head under them.
And in this position,
She can only say "Twit".
For who could say cuckoo,
With a beak full of feathers?

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 07 May 09 - 07:04 AM

As I was walking past St Pauls,
A man jumped out and grabbed my leg.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: TenorTwo
Date: 07 May 09 - 08:27 AM

To be sung to the tune of Tallis's "Canon":

I wish I were a woolly worm
with hairs upon my tummy,
I'd jump into a pot of glue
and make my tummy gummy.

T2

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: TheSnail
Date: 07 May 09 - 09:12 AM

What is that on the road, Mama?
It looks like strawberry jam.
Hush, hush my dear it is Papa
Run over by a tram.


I remember the St Pauls one as

As I was walking past St Pauls,
A woman grabbed me by the coat.
She said "You look a man of pluck.
Why not come in and have a cup of tea."

There may be more.

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: Charley Noble
Date: 07 May 09 - 09:13 AM

There was a crooked man,
And he did very well!

As remembered from The Inner City Goose.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: BobKnight
Date: 07 May 09 - 09:33 AM

Old Scottish poem: Anon:

Love, love, love,
Love is like a dizzyness,
It winna let a puir body,
Gang aboot his business.

Roger Miller:

Roses are red, violets are purple,
Sugar is sweet, and so is maple syrup-l.

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 07 May 09 - 11:37 AM

An oldie!!
There was a crooked man,
Who walked a crooked mile.
Found a crooked sixpence,
And knackered a chocolate machine!

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 07 May 09 - 12:10 PM

The two immediately below could be modified to include other populations near and dear to the reader:

"You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood,
Put it into a flea's navel,
And have room left over for a caraway seed
And an agent's heart."

Fred Allen

"Hollywood is a place where people spend money they don't have,
To buy things they don't need,
To impress people they don't like."

Ken Murray

Candy's dandy,
Liquor's quicker,
But sex won't rot your teeth.

Better to have flunked your Wasserman
Than never to have loved at all.

What's round and brown and sits on a piano bench?
Beethoven's last movement...

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: BobKnight
Date: 07 May 09 - 05:14 PM

Mary had an iron cow, she milked it with a spanner.
Out came shilling tins of milk and little ones at a tanner.

Mary had a little lamb, she kept it in the cellar,
A lump of coal stuck up its hole, and paralysed its smeller.

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 07 May 09 - 06:06 PM

the rain it raineth every day
Upon the just and unjust fella
But mostly on the just, because
The unjust stole the just's umbrella

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 07 May 09 - 06:14 PM

Rough day at the office - these are just stress relievers....


Jack & Jill went up the hill,
They each had a buck and a quarter.
Jill came down with two-and-a-half;
They didn't go after water!

If at first you don't succeed,
Suck eggs!

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.
She had so many children, she didn't know what to do.
Evidently!

Little Boy Blue,
Come blow your horn.
The sheep are in the meadow,
The cows in the corn.
Where's the boy who looks after the sheep?
He's under the haystack with Bo-Peep.

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 08 May 09 - 02:32 AM

Old Scottish epitaph called ' On Aberdeen '

Here lies the body of Elizabeth Charlotte,
Born a virgin, died a harlot,
A virgin still at seventeen,
A remarkable thing for Aberdeen.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: BobKnight
Date: 08 May 09 - 05:25 AM

Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet,
Her knickers all tattered and torn,
It wasn't the spider that frightened Miss Muffet,
It was little boy blue with his horn.

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 08 May 09 - 09:00 AM

I found this in ' Bawdy Ballads ' by Ed Cray, it's from ' A Collection Of Epigrams ' published in 1735

If death must come, as of as breath departs,
The he must often die, who often farts,
And if to die be but to lose ones breath,
Then deaths a fart; and so a fart for death.

now that's a REALLY important poem.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: GUEST,BanjoRay
Date: 09 May 09 - 07:57 AM

There was a young lady from Bude
Who went for a swim in the lake
A man in a punt
Stuck his pole in her ear
And said "You can't swim here, it's private"

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: GUEST,Joe Parry-Hill
Date: 15 May 09 - 09:08 AM

There was a boy named Willie,
Now Willie is no more,
What Willie thought was H2O was really H2SO4!

Author Unknown

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 15 May 09 - 09:47 AM

We used to say that about our chemistry teacher50 years ago,

Mr Duffield's dead and gone,
His voice we hear no more,
For what he thought was H2O
Was H2SO4

Dave H

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: paula t
Date: 15 May 09 - 10:30 AM

I like the "Ruthless Rhymes" of Harry Graham(1874 -1936). Here's a quick selection:

"There's been an accident!" they said,
"Your servant's cut in half; he's dead!"
"Indeed!" said Mr Jones, "and please
Send me the half that's got my keys."


Weep not for little Leonie,
Abducted by a French Marquis!
Though loss of honour was a wrench,
Just think how it improved her French!


That morning when my wife eloped
With James, our chauffeur, how I moped!
What tragedies in life there are!
I'm dashed if I can start the car!

Our governess - would you believe
It?-drowned herself on Christmas Eve!
This was a waste, as , anyway
It would have been a holiday.


When Mrs. Gorm (Aunt Eloise)
Was stung to death by savage bees,
Her husband (Prebendary Gorm)
Put on his veil, and took the swarm.
He's publishing a book , next May,
On "How To Make Bee-keeping Pay."

Quite hard to believe a Victorian poet could be so "sick"!

Subject: RE: Really Really Important Poem
From: frogprince
Date: 15 May 09 - 11:51 AM

Birdy with a yellow bill
Perched upon my window sill;
I lured him in with crumbs of bread
And crushed his little f***in' head.