[Brian Allgar]

Having struggled with the 'Poetry or Prose' thread, only to find myself thoroughly bothered and bewildered (if not exactly bewitched), I felt in need of a spot of silliness.

A game with dice and cards

I think I think, and therefore think I am -
At least, I think that’s what I think I think.
I sometimes wonder if it isn’t all a sham,
But this I know - I need another drink.

[Nigel Mace]

Though some might think Mallarme barmy
He only did it to annoy
And found in vague locution’s fusion
The sounding symbols he’d deploy
To make the sense translators wait for
A tantalisingly rare joy.

That’s not to say symbolic frolics
Had little purpose to fulfil
For murmurs like systolic colics
Showed writers’ hearts were beating still -
Though later vitriolic ball-ics
Claimed sounding phonemes authors kill.


Only, half-joking! Bill's piece did make me go and read up on Mallarme who seems to have enjoyed having it all ways and probably thoroughly relished being impossible to pin down. Apparently revered by some as one of the founts of the "death of the author" school. 'Nuff said.

[Jerome Betts]

Mallarme is hardly a bundle of laughs, but the funniest thing I've read about him (in a newspaper review I now can't find) is that he once edited a book of children's rhymes in English. This included the one about the man who jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.

It concludes:

And when he saw his eyes were out,
With all his might and main
He jumped into another bush
And scratched them in again!

Unfortunately, the editor, or his source omitted a vital word in the last line, so Mallarme's version ended 'And scratched them again!' leading the great man to add a worried scholarly footnote 'There is something here not quite clear'.

Mallarme in D & A? Blimey!

[Roger Slater]

"I drink, therefore I am,"
Descartes remarked when drunk.
"I stink, therefore I am,"
Remarked Descartes' pet skunk.

[Brian Allgar]

Another bit of silliness - my take on a current news story.

Doppelgänger

I woke up in the night at half-past one;
I absolutely had to have a pee.
Someone was in the loo! I took my gun
And blasted the intruder. It was me.

(P.S. Nigel, I love your double rhymes!)

[Brian Allgar]

“I’m dead”, thought Descartes, “so how can it be
That I’m thinking although I am not?
Forget what I said, for I fear that, like me,
It was simply a bundle of rot.”

[Brian Allgar]

“Descartes”, said God, “You stupid sod,
You’re claiming that because
I do not think, I am not God -
But then, I never was.”