Come chew the fat, good poets all--
don't drop the conversational ball.
There's only one condition:
What you write here has got to rhyme,
so open your Wood and take your time
in posting your submission
in formal forms or nonce--you choose
the rhyme and meter scheme to use.
Nigel's gone cyanotic!
He'll hold his breath till he gets his way;
says either we nonce or he won't play.
(Is that a bit despotic?)

So Nigel, dear, this thread's for you:
Do whatever you want to do.

Carol

Oh Nigel dear, I hope that you
look good in blue.

Nigel started up a thread
on Gazebo where he said,
"Poets, all, I challenge you
to write a silly poem or two
based on movies you and I know
(much as Tom just did with Psycho)."

Nigel's word is my command
and so at once I tried my hand.
What I produced I reproduce
upon this thread for double use,
confirming once again my motto:
What's good for the Gaz is good for Erato:

I refuse to participate; this is too crazy.
I'm crabby, cantankerous, feisty, 'n lazy.
I don't follow rules any more. That's for sure.
And you can't make me rhyme. I won't do. No Sir!



[This message has been edited by Pua Sandabar (edited January 12, 2002).]

Nigel, are you grieving
Over one old thread leaving?
Thoughts, like the things of man, you
With fresh words will rhyme, too, can you?
Ah! as your breath grows shorter
You will come to such sounds smarter
Very soon, nor spare a sigh
of the pure air you deny;
And yet you will breathe and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Nonce or formal--all the same.
While you slowly fade, breath bated
What you hoped for is created:
It is you this thread was born for,
It is Nigel whom we mourn for.

Oh, Margaret,
Mine eyes are wet.

------------------
Ralph

If someone would explain to me
who this guy named Nigel be
is he cute tall dark and handome
for who's love I'd pay King's ransom
is he the man of every girls dream
sexier than peaches and cream
would one kiss of his make me melt
and yearn for what's below the belt
if this description of mine holds true
then Nigel I want to marry you!


Gabriëlle Joy Eleonora

------------------
butterflies and melting chocolate,
fiery storm-winds, moody madness and silly fairy-tales....
a time to love, a time to dance and a time to write

[This message has been edited by joyeleonora (edited January 12, 2002).]

Before you ask him to adore a
girl named Gabriëlle Joy Eleonora,

before you come and claim "I'd gel
perfectly with a guy like Nigel,"

maybe you should explain some more
of why you're worth contending for?

Then, if Nigel is impressed
perhaps he'll undertake the test

that you exact from suitors who
may wish to settle down with you.

As much as I like and admire such gaiety,
from whenceforth in heck comes this wild spontaneity?
Seems you must each one be braver than I
or take things, perhaps, just less graver than I?
You pauselessly dash off such answering wit
or anyhow semi-related shit
as quickly as armies of flies land on worms
or, you know, that sweet goopy corpse stuff that squirms.
Hmmm -- friends, fellow Spherians, let me rephrase:
I come not to bury your words but to praise.
For, seeing you write fast, not gnash teeth or fidget--
I fear you've awakened a sleeping midget.

The one time I wakened a sound-sleeping midget
he cursed me and flashed me a foul middle digit.
And so it becomes my sad lot to report:
it isn't just stature; their tempers are short.

Limerist Fit, Non Nascitur

"Oh, How shall I write my first lim?
I would learn to write verses with vim;
You told me one time,
'To have wit is sublime.'
Won't you, Sir, give me one paradigm?"

The graybeard looked up and was glad
When he heard the bold words from the lad,
'True, humdrum he's not,
Nor dawdles a lot;
I suppose I could teach him a tad.'

"You would learn of the verse that's melodic,
Before you've had schooling methodic?
I can see you're no fool,
There is only one rule:
You must first learn to be a quixotic.

"A limerick's best writ from the back,
It's there you will put your wise crack;
Make *this* line the first
That you'll write in your thirst
To ensure you are on the right track.

"It will always consist of three feet,
With a 'Night before Christmas'-like beat;
You can think of this verse
If your meter sounds worse
Than the caterwaul calls from the street.

"Now the last you have got in the bag,
Use the first four to trigger the gag:
One & two rhyme with five,
Three & four both will strive
To echo each other like tag.

"Recalling the feet of the final ..."
He mused, while massaging his rhinal,
"Though line three and line four
Have dimeter score,
The rest are decidedly trinal."

"So if speaking of pies made of mutton,
We could say they are crafted from cuttin'
The fleecy flock's dreams
To silence their screams
And feed them to Lecter, the Glutton?"

"Why, yes," said the elderly gent,
"That example is just what I meant."

Your limericks, fine to inspect,
though metrical have one defect:
a limerick must
involve sex and lust.
The clean ones most readers reject.

You just cannot buck this tradition,
regardless how noble your mission.
No, you can't duck it.
That girl from Nantucket
is a limerick's true precondition.

Well, if you insist,

Syllepsis
=========

Joe Zeugma could not get a date,
Which left him a piteous state,
But with help from his name
He finally came
Into money, her bedroom and Kate.

Joe climbed off and grinned ear to ear.
"Did I make the earth move for you, dear?"
Kate lay back and sighed
"Well, my darling, you tried
but your earth-mover's too small, I fear"

A thread for me? How very kind!
It's not a thing I'm used to.
All nonce you say, and couplets rhymed
It's a thing I can't refuse you...


Young Thomas the gay young New Yorker,
was known as a witty old talker
of Steins out of Kleins
and for pinching behinds
and for knowing a 'stalk' from a 'stalker'.

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/biggrin.gif

Crude variations on a theme by Clive

That women don’t care about size
Is something poor Joseph denies:
He once came a cropper
When Kate said his “whopper”
Was one of those little white lies.


A fellow beside the Dordogne
Asked a woman he’d met, “could I bogne?
She sized up his basket
And decided to ask it:
“Would you wear an extension I’d logne?”

Negative - Eggative
Josephine Bonaparte
Shunned when Napoleon
Wanted a son,

Faulted not only his
Submicroscopical
Member but also how
Quick he was done.

Josephine Bonaparte
though she knew better men
should have known better than
speaking her heart.

Emperors have feelings, too,
don't like their balls impugned.
Far worse than Waterloo
was that cheap tart.

Though estoterical,
these are hysterical.

Hugh, your little cutie
does doubly-troubly duty.

Gibbity-Gabbity
Nigel the versemeister,
Given a thread of
his own, sent it back:

“Let’s reconsider,”
he said, “the conditions
that, under Ms Taylor,
a rhyme can expect.”

(music)

Thanks, Carol, and interesting point, bear. Anyone ever hear of a 'mishy-phen'? Three lines, rhyming aaa, any regular meter, and a hypen error ending lines one or two.

For example:


Correct hyphenation, I vow,
is important when dealing with cow-
orkers in poetry now.

In novels of Agatha Christie,
one seldom will notice a misty-
ped word in the text of her twisty.

So never be one of those guys
who write incorrectly with flys-
watter words that are scattered to skies.


The best ones include bad hyp-
henation that ties two connected words together for a double entendre.

A 'pun' mishy:


I once knew a sweetie named Bubbles,
the lady I paid for her troubles-
hooting my tennis, at doubles.

Great Scott! You've resorted to prose
in describing the mishy-phen!
Should we throw Hughie out on his nose?
Let's vote; is he out or in?

If we out him, he's probably in,
the times being such as they are:
A better solution
might be dissolution:
Can I have the mishy-phen car?

(music)

Hugh used prose in a rhyming
chiming
room and now Carol wants to kick that prosing lout
out
but put it to a vote--so we get to play
empereor for a day.
I say keep him in, laughs is laughs and all that and considerng the furor over scanning this poem and the poopie humor of that one
frankly we can use the fun
no matter how terribly horribly no good really bad no I mean really REALLY bad way it is done.
But Hugh
an off-the-frayed cuff suggeston for you.
If you ever want to or even need to prose again
then
consider doing what this poem does--
mishmashed doggrel just because
it sure do fit
though none-too-well the rules of the room. Ok point made--at least I hope--so time to quit.




[This message has been edited by nyctom (edited January 16, 2002).]

Elaboration of Nyctom's point

There are those
Who turn up a nose
At lineated prose
But Carol's only requirement was rhyme
So, Hugh, you mustn't regard yourself as pond-slime.
Of course, Carol does mention that we have the right, as we please, to choose a meter,
And from this it seems to follow, when you really think about it, that, should it please you, you might not use a meter.
Just be sure that whatever you say, whether coldly reasoned or passionate
Has a dash of Ogden Nash in it.
And since Nash is, with me, a long-time favorite,
If others do better at this, I'll savor it.



[This message has been edited by ChrisW (edited January 16, 2002).]

You've got it, Tom and Chris!
It needn't be symmetrical
or even wax poetical
as long as it rhymes like this.
(Of course anyone
can just ramble on
placing a pause
in sentence or clause
when a rhyme word appears,
my dears.)

Rhyme restricts one's choices, though.
I had a thought in mind to share
that did not involve a red bungalow,
had nothing to do with the anthrax scare,

but what it involved didn't rhyme very well
and so I was forced to write what I did
as Dante was forced to write about hell,
beholden to rhyme, his true subject hid.

"passionate/nash-in-it"?
Gee! I can picture chris
dashin' it
off with a grin on his face,

and frankly, this forum
's inclined to consider
trochaic decorum
the acme of grace,

so this sweetly irreverent,
metrically mangled
poem's a benevolent
shifting of pace,

and we should be thanking
chris very profusely
for making us laugh while he's yanking
our chains.


[This message has been edited by bear_music (edited January 18, 2002).]

It seems that I managed to fail
my post with a synchronous male-
volence that put me in jail!

Bear Music, square music's
just not your thing, is it?
Trochees and anapests
bore you to tears?

Death to pentameter!
It's so repetitive,
takes too much stamina,
grates on my ears!

[This message has been edited by Roger Slater (edited January 16, 2002).]

The quality of mercy is not strained;
Hugh is pardoned--at least he's unchained.
But let this be a lesson
to those who would fall
into shame and perdition:
If you can't say something rhymed about a person, don't say anything at all.

The quality of mercy, though, was strained
when Portia felt she had the upper hand.
She stripped poor Shylock of the wealth he'd gained
in lawful commerce, adding a demand
that he become a Christian and be grateful
consuming porcine mercy by the plateful.

The character of Marcy is not stained
She never was arrested--just detained.

Porcine mercy or fiscal crow
is easier lost than a pound of flesh.
I'd like to donate a dozen or so
that have falleneth on the part below
and become ingrained.
Oh, to start off slim and fresh
with jeans not strained!

bear if you wish to blow a thank you kiss
then you must aim as well at Chris
though after that Marcy thing you may want to think twice about this

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/tongue.gif



[This message has been edited by nyctom (edited January 16, 2002).]

Stomachache, carrot cake,
Quizzical queasiness,
How does one get from the
Table to bed?

Be carried up by a
Gastroenterical
Medical aide who won't
Simply drop dead.

Terese

I'm fat, but whoever is fatter 'll
be viewed as far better collateral.

Pirandellian

Parmigian, ptarmigan,
Cheese and tomato, now
How does one dress
To go raving in Rome?

Wear an Armani with
Faux-Pirandellian
Actors protecting you,
Else stay at home.

Terese

Tra la la, sha na Na-
polean Bonaparte
set out to conquer the
world in a snit.

When his intemperate
megalomania
met up with Wellington,
Nappy caught sh--.

Jan

A Mishy-phened Romance

He'd thought it was love when they kissed,
But she soon disappeared in a mist-
aken dream; it was never a tryst.

He was hopeful that maybe somehow
she'd return and embrace him, but now-
here would Fate such great pleasure allow.

Jan