[Steve Bucknell]

Kudos Bill!

Ian himself reads it much better than this. It's a rare poetry performance where an audience cries with laughter, but I've been to many of Ian's when this has been the case. I will rush off now and find my own favourite.

[Jerome Betts]

Cally and BJP, this was LOL for me at very tender age. (Genuine oral transmission via the old Lilliput.)

The thunder god went for a ride
Upon his favourite filly.
"I'm Thor!", he cried - the horse replied
"You forgot the thaddle, thilly!"

[Cally Conan-Davies]

Jerome!!!!!!!

I'm in stitches!!!!!! That's a rofl, not a lol!

Cally

[Andrew Frisardi]

There's a Mastery thread that has some good funny poems on it, started by much-missed Janet Kenny: http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showth...oto=nextnewest.

I posted one on that thread that still makes me laugh:

The Board’s Blare

Our Starver, Art without leaven,
Bellowéd be thy Fame;
Thy lingam come; thy will be gun,
On Campus as it is in Tavern.
Give us this day our Big Success.
Review at length our vacuousness
As we review those who evacuate with us.
And read us not in Profundity;
But circulate widely our drivel:
For Thine is the Foundation,
The Grants and the Glory,
For Sabbatical after Sabbatical.
Eh, men?

--Peter Russell, from his collection Malice Aforethought

It's not brilliant but it's pretty good. "Evacuate with us" and "Eh, men" are my favorite parts. I like humor with a scorpion sting, like that famous epigram by Blake on what an epigram is.

I also tend to like short funny pieces because they're less work. As in Max's limerick examples above. What can I say? I liked Austin Powers, the first one anyway. I have a weakness for sophomoric bathroom humor and dirty jokes.

On another note, I love Byron's wit (see Janet's example that opens that thread) and Shakespeare's wild wordplay scenes.

[Cally Conan-Davies]

Andrew, your reminder of Janet's absence just put out my laughing. :-(

[Steve Bucknell]

The Long Dark Corridor of Winter

A poem in the style of George Formby

It's dark!
It's long!
It's the long dark corridor of winter!

It's long!
It's dark!
It's the dark long corridor of winter!

After Christmas all you get
is freezing cold and soaking wet:
my Lancashire hot pot turns to ice
and missis, that's not very nice

Three months of underheated gloom
like laying out a corpse in a cold front room
tell me just tell me what I can do
when me ukelele's turning blue!

It's dark!
It's long!
It's the long dark corridor of winter!

It's long!
It's dark!
It's the dark long corridor of winter!

I'm from Lancashire not Finland
but I feel like an Arctic bloke
when you have to thaw your breath out to see what you're saying
it really is no joke!

Dark in the morning, dark at night
ghostly mills in ghostly light
I'm not feeling very bright
when winter grips me pencil tight!

It's dark!
It's long!
It's the long dark corridor of winter!

It's long!
It's dark!
It's the dark long corridor of winter!

Ian McMillan. I Found This Shirt. Carcanet.1998.

[Cally Conan-Davies]

Laughing again! (god - I'm faithless to my feelings!)

Thanks for bucking me up, Bucks!

[Holly Martins]

Spike Milligan was very good at the parody that plunges sharply in tone:

I must go down to the sea again,
to the lonely sea and the sky,
I left my vest and socks there,
I wonder if they're dry?


The boy stood on the burning deck
whence all but he had fled:- the twit!

[Andrew Frisardi]

I just realized I didn't really answer Maryann's question.

The thing about laugh-out-loud funny is it depends so much on mood and surprise. I did laugh out loud the first time I read "evacuate with us" in that poem, but not the second time. After the first time the funny part was more remembering how funny it was the first time. I was in the right mood the first time, plus the phrase surprised me. A lot of light or humorous verse, like a lot of poetry in general, lacks surprise--an unexpected turn of wit or language. So even if it's chuckle material it's not really laugh-out-loud material.

[Steve Bucknell]

I can’t resist a little Lister:

Postscript to
Die Schone Muller.

The freshet springs from woodland cleft,
Its waters crystal clear and cool;
The lovesick youth, of sense bereft,
Leaps madly in the swirling pool.

Quelled are his turbulence and woe
Who loved the miller’s daughter;
And in the village far below
They take to filtering the water.