[Patrick Murtha]

“A Siren,”
He blubbered, “seduced us with ballads by Byron.”
The cop found no clue of a murderous fowl-female of yore,
But only some bones and a musical bird on the shore.

[Roger Slater]

For a Buddhist octopod
it isn't odd
to ask oneself, awake or napping,
what is the sound of seven hands clapping?

[John Isbell]

A millipede
has no earthly need
of footwear, which is lucky.
He is a clever ducky!

[Roger Slater]

A termite
with fur might
exist it there could
also be rabbits who liked to eat wood.

[Roger Slater]

A salmon
loves jammin'
with musical whales,
and he does it quite well since he's practiced his scales.

[Mark McDonnell]

We are a kind of ape,
although one can't escape
that collectively we're less of a shrewdness
and more of a rudeness.

[Ken Brownlow]

These two were winners in clerihew contest in the New Statesman many years ago.

Karl Marx
Provided the clerks
With a dialectical reason
For their treason

Basil Ransome
....................................

Considering that Trotsky
Did not ski
It was a bit thick
To fricassee his brains with an ice pick

Robin Ravensbourne

[RCL]

There once was a Yankee named Henry
who pretended to live in penury.
He built a crude cabin on Indian ground,
recorded every frigging sound!

There was a Yank named Emerson
who treated Henry like a son,
but jailed when not paying taxes for slavery
he told old Ralph, “In here I’m free!”

[RCL]

A failure in old Russia, Ayn Rand
fled to a greener greedy land.
Her ponderous books and lust for dollars
curse her adolescent admirers.

A rabid Randian follower,
Paul Ryan has political power
but none of intellect
that we can detect.

Rand Paul is such a downer,
another Randian fawner.
He spewed his crap last night,
and ended the Tea Party’s fight.

[RCL]

Joe Stalin was born a Georgian
but gorging on Marx and Lenin
defeated Russians in Moscow,
home-boy Beria at his elbow.

Trotsky wasn’t very foxy.
But bodyguard named Bernie
Wolfe survived, became one day
an English prof at UCLA!

(Late 60s, his office across from mine)