[Orwn Acra]

But, Don, it's not summarizing, it's basing a poem off the title.

[Don Jones]

*********************

[Julie Steiner]

THE RED AND THE BLACK

Red was once a festive hue,
.....so merry, bright, and cheery.
Black? For mourners. (Villains, too.)
.....It used to seem so dreary.

We now see red when black is gone:
.....investments barely mosey,
and red means Danger! Overdrawn!
.....while in the black means rosy.

[John Whitworth]

There was a competition for summarising poems in a limerick, or was it THREE limericks. Anyway, the great Wendy Cope did it for 'The Waste Land'. And there's the famous summary of 'The Ode to a Grecian Urn'.

Gods chase
Round vase.
What say?
What play?
Don't know.
Nice though.

Now that's what I call perfect. I've forgotten who wrote it.

Here's another shot.

Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett

That statue labelled Gordon Brown,
Ten minutes and we’ll have it down.
Heave ho, I know it’s going to go.
Heave ho, heave ho, I told you so.
See, shattered in the dust it lies,
The ghastly smile, the hooded eyes,
The bitten nails, the clunking fist,
I swear they’ll none of them be missed.

And those ridiculous buffoons,
The Smiths, Straws, Kellys, Harmans, Hoons,
The Ballses and the Millipedes,
The other, horrid, lesser breeds,
The Toynbee and her scribbling friends,
No shards of marble mark their ends:
It is a perfect pastoral scene
As if the swine had never been.

[Roger Slater]

John, Bumbershoot had a "fractured verse" feature which consisted mostly of limerick versions of famous poems. Many of us here had limericks there, and I had quite a few, including a Grecian Urn. http://www.umbrellajournal.com/summe.../contents.html

Still flailing on this comp, though. One more:


THE NAKED AND THE DEAD

Some are naked but alive,
and some are dead but dressed.
My friend, the necrophiliac,
declares he likes it best

when undertakers don't put clothes
on corpses but instead
add them to the legions of
the naked and the dead.

[John Whitworth]

I love it, Roger. But you should introduce that wonderful word 'fug' used by daft fugger Norman Mailer. I've always thought a thick fug enveloped 'The Naked and the Dead' anyway.

[basil ransome-davies]

Poor Norm's taken a lot of flak for that, John. But he was faced (if you remember) with a narrow, oppressive censorship, & his – or his publisher's – way round it was more successful than Hemingway's in For Whom The Bell Tolls ('I obscenity in the milk of thy father'). The Naked & The Dead was the book that taught me that men in war (unlike Richard Attenborough, John Mills, Kenneth More, etc.) shat themselves with fear. And whatever you say about his first novel it wasn't devoid of ideas & insights, some of which – such as the proto-fascist attitudes of the military – are currently relevant.

Of course he was totally out of his gourd later, & often a bore with it.

[Roger Slater]

I'll work on it more later, but meanwhile...

THE LONG GOODBYE

I mention six or seven times
that I must wake at dawn.
I say, "Tonight was lots of fun."
Repeatedly, I yawn.

Shamelessly, I eye the clock
and let him see me wince.
I tell him, "Well..." and rub my eyes.
But he won't take the hints.

Finally, at three a.m.,
he says, "I'm such a louse,
but friend, would you mind leaving now?"
Oh no! It's not my house!

[FOsen]

Editing in to thank Bob, for counting for me, and John, for speling.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

There once was a surgeon from Prague
whose morals were wispy and vague
he made love to a bevy,
while his wife was the heavy,
he was light, she was heavy, as fog.

With his ethical guidelines ablur,
since existences never recur,
he could cheat and philander,
then confess it with candor,
for it didn’t make sense to demur.

Then he saw through his new way of seeing,
that man’s still a lumbering being
he determined that fate had
got him truly Czech-mated—
it was cumbersome, rather than freeing.

Frank

[Roger Slater]

Very good, Frank. You need to lose one for the line limit. I'd drop the third.