Thank you John. I think Larkin's larking has the edge, especially with that nice touch of pessimism. That lonely "None" gets me right there.

Humorist, Heal Thyself

Ogden Nash

When I have fears my oeuvre may have gone from bad to verse,
then I yearn to be the man who stands in the OR and hollers "Nurse!
Scalpel, please!" Yes, I'd gladly trade places with that feller
who makes the sick get well and the well get weller.
Ah, if I could be the Hippocratic hero responsible
for removing many an appendix or kidney stone or tonsible,
how lordly in spotless labcoat I'd stand
dispensing prescriptions in an illegible hand.
But the one thing that almost always raises my spirits after
these sessions of self-doubt is the old adage that laughter
is the best medicine, or so some insist.
Well if this is true, then I'm a specialist:
a practitioner of puns and limericks and silly rhymes too numerous
to count. That's right. A doctor of the humerus.*

*Although some purist will undoubtedly point out that the sensation of numbness
.......attributed to the funnybone, aka humerus, is actually caused by the ulnar nerve.
But 'twill serve.

adage fixed. Thanks, Professor.

Oh yes! Perhaps I might add n pedantic vein that adage has one d, or at least I think it does. We ARE doing well this week

Mr. Keats, Surgeon, to Z., of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine

When I have fears that you may cease to pee
Before my probe has sounded your urethra,
Before I've rushed you to my surgery
To check you out for stones with neither ether nor
Chloroform for the pain (not yet discovered!);
When I consider how you might lie strapped
Upon my table whilst my blade has hovered
Over you for an hour (Now you're trapped!);
And when you squeal, squeal in a piggy voice
That henceforth you'll be kind to fledgling bards,
That editors had given you no choice,
Led as they were by Bacchus and his pards,
I may relent, savoring how you knock knees
When treated by myself and licensed Cockneys.

Easier version, for the competition:

Mr. Keats, Surgeon, to Z., of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine

When I have fears that you may cease to be
Before my knife has scored your tumid brain,
Before I've rushed you to my surgery
To find more painful treatments for your pain;
When I consider how you might lie strapped
Here on my table, whilst my blade has hovered
Over you for an hour (Now you're trapped!)
Probing for some ill that may be discovered;
And when I hear you squeal, your piggy voice
Crying you'll be more kind to fledgling bards,
That editors had given you no choice,
Led as they were by Bacchus and his pards,
I may relent, savoring how you knock knees
When treated by myself and other Cockneys.

Sundae Morning

Let be be finale of insurance queries.
The only emperor is the taster at Ben & Jerry's*.

* Oh, Ben & Jerry's is a New England thing, isn't it? Ice Cream Emporium extraordinaire.

Prologue

Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
Thanne we’ll be wel over this month’s quota;
Moore wather at tenne, weth Johnnie Dakota!

Frank

I take it back - this would be Chaucer today:

WHO’s bathing every veyne in swich licour???
Fynde out with Blinde Ytems, by Geoff Chaucer:

WHAT knyght is ther, who riden farre from home,
Is alweys travellynge with his yong “sonne?”

WHICH yeman causes compaignye to cackle
By shewing wommen-folk his swerd & takle?

WHAT nonne insists we cal her “prioresse”
(she now affects an accent frenssh)
and leets no morsel from hir lippes falle
But in her chamber, spews them alle . . . .

WHAT wanderinge wif is ther of bathe,
Yclept a “cougar” for the lust she hath,
Whose hippes used to weigh a tonne—
Me thynketh someone’s had her wimples done . . . .

WHAT Pardoner (of berd, he hassn’t annye)
Is secretly a pre-op tranniye?

Frank

Emily Dickinson, Women's Doctor


If I can stop one Egg from Dropping
I shall not live in Vain—
If I can, by one Pill Popping,
Remain Sane—

And see within my Lifetime
A Birth rate on the Wane—
I shall not live in Vain.

The Road Not taken--E.A.Poe

Oh the midnight would be cheery as I sketched each little dearie
at the Moulin Rouge or Lido where the finest girls undressed.
While I painted a la Toulouse, Moniques. Mirabelles and Lulus
would each come and caress me, press me to her ample breast.
Oh the hell with writing poetry, with this painting I’m impressed,
Only this, and I’d be blest.

And I wouldn’t be like Vincent, no mere sunflowers, I’m insistent
I'd sell paintings in an instant to replete my treasure chest.
Every time I set my easel up would fill up my Merc with diesel up,
and my heart fill with the thrill of mam’selles from the east and west,
With the rare and radiant love of maidens from the east and west.
Lautrec can have the rest.

The truly incongruous thought of John Betjeman in tights appealed to me. So, hopefully with a touch of his endearing wistfulness regarding lust ;--


Your fish-netted thighs have me weak at the knees
As I dream of us climbing towards our trapeze,
Then standing surveying the crowd from the heights,
You in your sequins and me in my tights --

Then the audience cheering your lissom young charms
As you fly your parabolas into my arms,
And their gasp of alarm as you plummet and twist
Till I grasp you and clasp you by ankle and wrist --

And the thrill of your touch and the throb of each nerve
As you hang from my legs in a sinuous curve,
And the joy that would come, once I gathered you in.
From the nearness of sequins, the closeness of skin.

Away with my love for Victorian yore,
Let Erato my Muse flee my life evermore;
For I’d swap them today for the chance of a whirl
And an aerial tangle with one spangled girl.