Pollution, all around.
Sometimes up, sometimes down.
But always around.
Pollution are you coming to my town?
Or am I coming to yours?
Ha! We’re on different buses, pollution, but we’re both using petrol
There once was a fellow called Gandhi
Who went into a pub for a shandy.
He used his loin cloth [let’s make it scan]
To wipe off the froth.
And the barman said, “Blimey. That’s handy!”
Square brackets were put there to make it an editorial comment, not an addition to the line.
As for your suggestion, shortening the first two lines stops it from being a limerick in any meaningful way, which is ok, except it leaves the last line stranded with an awkward pause midway. Let’s dress it up and give it company
Mahatma Gandhi
Ordered a shandy
Wiped off the froth
With his loincloth
Barman, (called Andy)
Said “that’s really handy!
My cap I do doth.
Would you like some Scotch Broth?”
There was a young man called Bono
Who wrote a poem to Putin on his own-o
He said stop the war now
Things could get worse, and here’s how,
The next one will be by Yoko Ono
Send my regards to him after his unfortunate mishap. I know that, even after what happened, he still can’t get close enough to the keyboard to tell his side of the story.
I still haven’t found. What? I’m looking!
For with or with out you I’m cooking
Ultraviolet (Light My Way)
It’s a Beautiful Day
Where the Streets Have No Name (Trevor Brooking)
The tap drips and keeps me awake,
In the morning there will be a lake.
For the want of a washer the carpet will spoil,
Then for another my father will toil.
My father could snuff it while he is at work.
Dad, fit a washer don’t be a berk!
Fatty said to Thinny
“Oh aren’t you a slob
Your stomach’s such a big one
It must obscure your knob.
Isn’t that a problem when you’re on the job?”
Said Fatty, “I’m a girly”
And punched him in the gob.
An inspired idea. I am thinking a Wurzels cover of The Message about operating a combine harvester (again) – “Don’t push me cos oim close to the hedge”. If they black themselves up as well I think they have a surefire hit on their hands.
Well, I think it’s lovely. He’s done the best thing you can do in a poem: tell us right out what something symbolises rather than letting us work out all that irritating figurative shit. If only more writers would do this.
“But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun,
not literally the sun, because a person
can’t literally be the sun, that would be
ridiculous, but like the sun, because
she’s well fit and gives me the fackin orn.”
To be or not to be: that is the question.
Well technically it’s a question, there are loads of others.
Is being dead worse than being alive? Hard to say really.
Anyway, can’t sit here soliloquising all day, I’m off to fuck me mum and kill me stepdad.
My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough,
Which symbolise the opportunities of life,
Did you get that?
Longman’s Audio Visual French (Stage One) was quite certain that pants were the item in question. La famille Marsaud sont dans le salle a manger, comme d’habitude ect, ect.
I see your wee wee and raise you a poo poo, courtesy of the Rutles
Hey diddle diddle
The cat and the fiddle
Piggy in the middle
Doo-a-poo-poo
a-poo-poo-poo
Hush, hush,
Nobody cares!
Christopher Robin
Has
Fallen
Down-
Stairs.
J. B. Morton (Beachcomber)
Checking for who said this one of the names asking for whose quote it was was Malcolm Pryce author of “The Unbearable Lightness Of Being In Aberystwyth” which links back to Saucy’s plagiarism thread.
Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings was a poet who wrote the worst poetry in the universe. In fact, her poetry is still considered to be the worst in the Galaxy
Bono’s effort is immeasurably worse than her:
The dead swans lay in the stagnant pool.
They lay. They rotted. They turned
Around occasionally.
Bits of flesh dropped off them from
Time to time.:And sank into the pool’s mire.
They also smelt a great deal.
I appreciate all your efforts, really I do, but not one attempt, including that of a world class satirist trying to write the worst poetry of all time, comes close to the sheer awfulness of Bono’s, which has all the merit, weight and artistic impact of the yield of a barely adolescent poet’s first successful wank.
Pollution, all around.
Sometimes up, sometimes down.
But always around.
Pollution are you coming to my town?
Or am I coming to yours?
Ha! We’re on different buses, pollution, but we’re both using petrol
… bombs.
That one really needs to be performed, rather than read…
Nancy Pelosi read out Bono’s, and not just as a warning to the other boys and girls of what would happen if they persisted in dabbling in doggerel.
@fitterstoke
Simply coventrated by the blunt, economical – almost
Parsimonious use of words – Video unavailable.
The blank verse that follows merely adds to the
Reader’s sense of escalating existential dread.
“Content…blocked….copyright…”
The gossamer carress of the brevity cuts deep into
One’s emotional skin,.
(dang nab it…)
It reads like three limericks strung together.
On copyright grounds…
Despite doing the rounds…
…
“But in sorrow and fear
That’s when saints can appear”
“What the feck’s wrong with that grandad? They are heartless bastards” – that’s what my 8 year old grandson said.
There was a young man named Gandhi
Who to the pub for a shandy
With his loincloth
He wiped off the froth
And the barman said ‘Blimey, that’s handy!’
Well done you! I think we’re so very nearly there! Might I suggest a teensy bit of editing?
There was a young man named Gandhi
Who to the pub for a shandy
He wiped off the froth
With his loincloth
And the barman said ‘Blimey, that’s handy!’
Muphry’s Law
There once was a fellow called Gandhi
Who went into a pub for a shandy.
He used his loin cloth [let’s make it scan]
To wipe off the froth.
And the barman said, “Blimey. That’s handy!”
Your [let’s make it scan] addition throws out the meter and the rhyme.
I suggest this:
Mahatma Gandhi
Ordered a shandy
Wiped off the froth
With his loincloth
Barman said “that’s handy!”
Square brackets were put there to make it an editorial comment, not an addition to the line.
As for your suggestion, shortening the first two lines stops it from being a limerick in any meaningful way, which is ok, except it leaves the last line stranded with an awkward pause midway. Let’s dress it up and give it company
Mahatma Gandhi
Ordered a shandy
Wiped off the froth
With his loincloth
Barman, (called Andy)
Said “that’s really handy!
My cap I do doth.
Would you like some Scotch Broth?”
Editing schmedditing. I like watches.
The boy stood on the burning deck
His legs were all a- quiver
He gave a cough
His leg dropped off
And floated down the river
The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled.
The Captain had told him to go as well
But he hadn’t quite heard what he said.
The boy stood on the burning deck
Picking his nose like mad
He rolled some up in a little ball
And flicked it at his dad
The boy stood on the burning deck
TWIT
©️ Spike Milligna
The boy stood on the burning deck
The crew were playing cricket
The ball went up his trouser leg
And hit his middle wicket
The boy stood on the burning deck
His pockets full of crackers
A spark went up his trouser leg
And blew off both his knackers
It’s always good to find your level.
The boy stood on the burning deck
Eating a tuppenny Walls
A piece fell down the front of his pants
And paralysed his balls
That doesn’t scan very well. No TS Eliot prize for you.
The boy stood on the burning deck
His feet were full of blisters
The flame went up and burned his pants
And now he wears his sister’s
(with thanks to Peter Glaze and Don Maclean from a vaguely remembered episode of Crackerjack!)
Ah yes Don Maclean. Catchphrase: M’clean, ant ah?
(I’m clean, aren’t I) – I think
^Who’s that little old man?
I can’t open the link and I think I’m fine with that.
There was a young man called Bono
Who wrote a poem to Putin on his own-o
He said stop the war now
Things could get worse, and here’s how,
The next one will be by Yoko Ono
Every time I clap my hands
A bomb falls on Ukraine
I did it for the starving kids
And I’m doing it again
Stop clapping your hands then
Bono is an anagram of O’Nob.
that’s a emordnilap
Depends which O you’re using.
Did I tell you about My friend Billy?
Welll……
Send my regards to him after his unfortunate mishap. I know that, even after what happened, he still can’t get close enough to the keyboard to tell his side of the story.
I still haven’t found. What? I’m looking!
For with or with out you I’m cooking
Ultraviolet (Light My Way)
It’s a Beautiful Day
Where the Streets Have No Name (Trevor Brooking)
The tap drips and keeps me awake,
In the morning there will be a lake.
For the want of a washer the carpet will spoil,
Then for another my father will toil.
My father could snuff it while he is at work.
Dad, fit a washer don’t be a berk!
Fatty and Skinny went to bed
Fatty pumped
And Skinny was dead.
Fatty and Skinny in the bath
Fatty blew off
And made Bubble Bath
(I think I’ve found my level)
Fatty said to Thinny
“Oh aren’t you a slob
Your stomach’s such a big one
It must obscure your knob.
Isn’t that a problem when you’re on the job?”
Said Fatty, “I’m a girly”
And punched him in the gob.
……stitch that, so-called Patience Strong.
There’s a slight flaw in your first line which renders the piece nonsensical. See me after class.
Oh yes!….I’d be more careful with my posts if I thought people read them.
It’s ok, I don’t think anyone has.
Phew
Fatty and Skinny are new to me. What a scented bower of poesie this thread is!
Gandhi, shandy and fatal flatulence.
That’s a secure password and no mistake
A scented bower?
Sapristi!
No more curried eggs for me, you naughty man!
…..gad, will I never be free of them.
My friend Billy had a 10 foot willy
He showed it to the girl next door
She thought it was a snake
So she hit it with a rake
And now it’s only 4 foot 4
I’ve just realised that if you add “Don’t push me ‘cos I’m close to the edge” to the end, it fits in the middle of The Message by Grandmaster Flash.
An inspired idea. I am thinking a Wurzels cover of The Message about operating a combine harvester (again) – “Don’t push me cos oim close to the hedge”. If they black themselves up as well I think they have a surefire hit on their hands.
“People pissing on the stairs, you know they just don’t care!”
….poor Billy had no choice, he couldn’t fit in the same room as the toilet
Billy, don’t be a hero…
Well, I think it’s lovely. He’s done the best thing you can do in a poem: tell us right out what something symbolises rather than letting us work out all that irritating figurative shit. If only more writers would do this.
“But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun,
not literally the sun, because a person
can’t literally be the sun, that would be
ridiculous, but like the sun, because
she’s well fit and gives me the fackin orn.”
Today’s tea/keyboard moment! Well done, Robert.
To be or not to be: that is the question.
Well technically it’s a question, there are loads of others.
Is being dead worse than being alive? Hard to say really.
Anyway, can’t sit here soliloquising all day, I’m off to fuck me mum and kill me stepdad.
My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough,
Which symbolise the opportunities of life,
Did you get that?
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
You make me sneeze
Now is the Winer of our discontent.
Umm … how soon is now, and it’s Spring and I’m fairly happy
If music be the food of love, play a tune on my pink oboe
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow is Saturday.
I could do with a cheap tent.
All the girls in France
Do the hulie-hulie dance
‘Do a wee-wee in their pants’, shurely?
You must be mixing them up with the girls in Spain, GCU.
Although they do a wee-wee down the drain, I think you’ll find.
Longman’s Audio Visual French (Stage One) was quite certain that pants were the item in question. La famille Marsaud sont dans le salle a manger, comme d’habitude ect, ect.
(Northern version)
All the girls in France
Do the Can Can with no pants.
I see your wee wee and raise you a poo poo, courtesy of the Rutles
Hey diddle diddle
The cat and the fiddle
Piggy in the middle
Doo-a-poo-poo
a-poo-poo-poo
Sure beats “Well, tonight thank God its them, instead of youuuuuuu”
Really, it doesn’t. The DTKIC? line is awful, but this is so, so, so much worse.
Also, Bonio didn’t write that song.
Hush, hush, whisper who dares
Little boy sits at the foot of the stairs
Blood on his fingers and fur on the mat
Christopher Robin’s castrated the cat.
Sh*t, f*ck,
Listen, who swears?
Christopher Robin,
Has fallen downstairs.
I think it was a Willie Rushton originally.
Hush, hush,
Nobody cares!
Christopher Robin
Has
Fallen
Down-
Stairs.
J. B. Morton (Beachcomber)
Checking for who said this one of the names asking for whose quote it was was Malcolm Pryce author of “The Unbearable Lightness Of Being In Aberystwyth” which links back to Saucy’s plagiarism thread.
Hey diddle diddle, the cat done a piddle
All over the bathroom mat
The little dog laughed to see such fun
And piddled all over the cat
Arf!
Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
Miss Joan Hunter Dunn…
In Hitchhikers’
Bono’s effort is immeasurably worse than her:
[Source https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Paula_Nancy_Millstone_Jennings ]
I appreciate all your efforts, really I do, but not one attempt, including that of a world class satirist trying to write the worst poetry of all time, comes close to the sheer awfulness of Bono’s, which has all the merit, weight and artistic impact of the yield of a barely adolescent poet’s first successful wank.
His Ukraine poem is immeasurably bad and mostly he’s a bit of a knob. But he did do this…
Full on Vogon.
That should have been read at the restaurant at the end of the world/universe.