WITHOUT RHYME OR REASON

Reading The Meter With SUNFUN Poetry


     Greetings friends to the Funnies of Sunday,
     Where most every topic will show up someday.
     (Stay with me gang, this intro in verse,
     Starts out pretty good, but soon it gets worse.)

     Poetry is difficult, tough to know,
     Where words and emotions leap to and fro.
     Poor it is to convey information,
     But exists no better consolation.

     Poetry states what everyone knows,
     In fancier ways than regular prose.
     With sentences likely incomplete,
     And rhyming, little metric feet.

     Taking this on in humorous vein,
     May finally prove us quite insane.
     But that would come as no surprise,
     To you who weekly read with sighs.

     Thanks this week to the usual crew,
     The folks we can without not do.
     (Alright, that phrase is ugly enough,
     But just you try and rhyme this stuff!)

     There's our anchor pal, Jerry Taff,
     Who sends  stuff that makes us laugh.
     Our friend down under, Diana Lee,
     And Tim McChain, And Helen Yee.

     Carol Becwar and Elleh, Nnamdi,
     And friend Caterina, who was Lee.
     These days, of course, she's Mrs. Sukup,
     Not that it leaves us all that shook up.

     From across the seas, Fumiko Umino,
     Closer to home there's Bruce Gonzo.
     Kerry Miller, Jan Michalski,
     Shawn Mullen and Laura Hong Li.

     So, ride along for our favorites in rhyme,
     Or, write your own, if you have time.
     Almost done save one last squeak.
     Only to wish you -
          Have A Great Week,


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MARY, MARY, TOWNS CONTRARY...
--------------------------
     Mary had a little lamb says the old childrens' rhyme.  That
may be the only part of the story that is not in dispute.  You
might think it odd that such a well-known poem could cause that
much controversy, but two New England towns are locked in a
fierce debate about Mary and her pet sheep.
     The story?  It depends on who you ask.  The residents of
Sterling, Massachusetts know that Mary Sawyer's muttony friend
showed up at her elementary school one day in 1815, inspiring a
classmate to pen a poem commemorating the notable event.
     Not so, claims Newport, New Hampshire.  According to them,
"Mary Had A Little Lamb" was penned by local poet and publisher
Sarah Josepha Hale.  Ms. Hale had quite a career and was a famous
publisher and writer of her time.  In Newport.
     Diane Melon, Sterling resident and a direct descendant of
the famous Mary, owns the homestead where Mary lived with her
friendly livestock and states simply that the poem was written by
one John Roulston.  Everyone in Sterling knows that.
     "I've got written testimonies from people that were either
in the classroom, or from his father sort of stating it
happened," Melone said.
     Melone said she has does not have a problem giving Hale
credit for first publishing the verse, and maybe even writing the
final stanzas.  But the basic rhyme belongs to Sterling.
     "Sarah Josepha Hale ...  was certainly an amazing woman,"
Melone said.  "The first three (stanzas) are certainly very
different from the last three.  It doesn't take a poetry expert
to see that."
     Hale wrote the whole poem, Newport residents say.  The first
recorded publication of Mary Had a Little Lamb was under Hale's
name in a magazine called "Juvenile Miscellany" in 1830 and it
appeared the same year in her book "Poems for Our Children." 
Hale was a well-established author and wouldn't have needed to
crib couplets from any school kid, or so the New Hampshire folks
say.
     So, the spat goes on, with both towns claiming to be the
home of one of the world's best known rhymes.  It's a matter of
civic pride so they can make the tourist dollars, you see.  (AP)
               [ Mary had a little lamb,
               Bureaucracy we dread.
               Makes you wish she'd had it,
               Between two slabs of bread. ]


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MOTHER GOOSE, REVISITED...
-----------------------

     Hickory, Dickory, Dock,
     Three mice ran up the clock,
     The clock struck one,
     And the other two got away with minor injuries.

----------

     There was an old woman who lived in a shoe
     She said, "With my pension, it's all I can do.
     It may be substandard, but just down the block,
     I know an old lady who lives in a sock."

----------

     Jack and Jill went up the hill
     To fetch a pail of water.
     Jill forgot to take her pill,
     So now they've got a daughter.

----------

     Little Miss Muffet
     Sat on her tuffet
     Eating her curds and goo.
     Along came a spider,
     And sat down beside her
     So she ate that, too.

----------

     Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard
     To get her poor daughter a dress.
     But when she got there, the cupboard was bare,
     And so was her daughter, I guess.

----------

     Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
     Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,
     All the king's horses and all the king's men,
     Had omelet for breakfast, enough for ten.

----------

     Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
     How does your garden grow?
     With care and sweat and hoe and harrow,
     And chemical slops by the barrel.

----------

     Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam,
     Where the deer and the antelope play.
     Where seldom is heard,
     A discouraging word,
     But then what can an antelope say?

----------

     Roses are red,
     Violets are blue,
     Some poems rhyme,
     But this one doesn't

----------

     Mary had a little lamb,
     Its fleece was white as snow.
     And every where that Mary went,
     The lamb was sure to go.

     Now Mary found meat's price too high,
     Which really didn't please her.
     Tonight she's having leg of lamb,
     The rest is in the freezer.

----------

     To err is human, to forgive divine.
     To err is human, to purr feline.
     To err is human, to do nothing, benign.
     To err is human, to quit, resign.
     To err is human, to bark canine.
     To err is human, to howl about it, lupine.
     To err is human, to solve it, design.
     To err is human, to admit it, asinine.
     To err is human, to moo bovine.

----------

     An accusation I always hated,
     Is "You are a couch potato!"
     That it was false, I never doubted,
     Until the day I found I'd sprouted.


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FIVE LINES FROM DOGGEREL TO LIMMERICK
-------------------------------------

     There once was a juggler named Drops
     Who couldn't hang onto his props.
     He tossed 'em and heaved 'em,
     Then dropped and retrieved 'em,
     'Til the audience told him to stop.

----------

     There was a young lady named Hall,
     Wore a newspaper dress to a ball.
     The dress caught fire,
     And burned her entire
     Front page, sports section, and all.

----------

     A wanton young lady from Wimley,
     Reproached for not acting quite primly,
     Said, "Heavens above!
     I know sex isn't love,
     But it's such an entrancing facsimile."

----------

     There was this lady from Niger,
     Who smiled as she rode on a tiger.
     They returned from the ride,
     With the lady inside
     And the smile on the face of the tiger.

----------

     There once was a barmaid named Gail
     On whose chest were the prices of ale.
     And on her behind,
     For the sake of the blind,
     Was precisely the same, but in Braille.

----------

     There once was an old man from Esser,
     Who's knowledge grew lesser and lesser.
     It at last grew so small,
     He knew nothing at all,
     And now he's a College Professor.

----------

     Said Freud, "I've discovered the Id.
     Of all your repressions be rid.
     It won't ease the gravity
     Of all the depravity,
     But you'll know why you did what you did."

----------

     There once was a woman named Bright,
     Who travelled at near speed of light.
     She departed one day,
     In a relative way,
     And returned on an earlier night.

----------

     There once was a man from Kazoo,
     Whose limericks end on line two.

----------

     There was a cute girl named Amelia,
     Who went to a dance as a dahlia.
     But when petals uncurled,
     It revealed to the world
     That the dress, as a dress, was a failure.

----------

     A bather whose clothing was strewed,
     By breezes that left her quite nude.
     Saw a man come along,
     And, unless I'm quite wrong,
     You expected this line to be lewd.

----------

     There was an old man of Japan,
     Whose verses would never quite scan.
     When people asked why, 
     He replied by and by, 
     Well, I suppose it's because I always put as many words into
          the last line as I possibly can.

----------

THE SPARTA WONDER
-----------------

     There was a young fellow from Sparta,
     A truly magnificent farter,
     On the strength of one bean
     He'd fart God Save The Queen,
     And Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.

     Spurred on by a very high wager,
     With an envious Lieutenant Major,
     He proceeded to fart,
     The complete oboe part,
     Of the Hayden Octet in B-Major.

----------

     The limerick's form's astronomical,
     Fits so much in space economical.
     But the ones that I've seen,
     Are quite seldom clean,
     And the clean ones are so seldom comical.

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MEETING THE EYE
---------------

     You'll probably find,
     That it suits your book,
     To be a bit cleverer,
     Than you look.

     Observe that the easiest, 
     Method by far,
     Is to look a bit stupider, 
     Than you are.
                            - Piet Hein

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MY OLD NASH...
-----------

SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD 

     I think that I shall never see,
     A billboard lovely as a tree.
     Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
     I'll never see a tree at all.
                            - Ogden Nash

----------

THE FLY 

     The Lord in His wisdom made the fly, 
     And then forgot to tell us why. 
                            - Ogden Nash

----------

THE COW 

     The cow is of bovine ilk; 
     One end is moo, the other is milk. 
                            - Ogden Nash

----------

THE EEL 

     I don't mind eels.
     Except as meals. 
     And the way they feels.
                            - Ogden Nash

----------

THE TURTLE 

     The turtle lives twixt plated decks,
     Which practically conceal its sex. 
     I think it clever of the turtle,
     In such a fix to be so fertile. 
                            - Ogden Nash

----------

THE PELICAN

     There once was a bird named the Pelican,
     Put more in his beak than his belican,
     He put more in his beak, 
     Than to last him a week,
     And I don't know how in the helican.
                            - Ogden Nash

----------

THE PURIST

     I give you now Professor Twist,
     A conscientious scientist.
     Trustees exclaimed, "He never bungles!"
     And sent him off to distant jungles.
     Camped on a tropic river side,
     One day he missed his loving bride.
     She had, the guide informed him later,
     Been eaten by an alligator.
     Professor Twist could not but smile.
     "You mean," he said, "a crocodile."
                            - Ogden Nash

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THE ANSWER MAN
---------------

     Tell me why the sky is blue,
     Tell me why the sexes are two,
     Tell me why bananas are curved,
     And I will tell what you deserve.

     The sky is blue 'cause it's full of doubt,
     The sexes are two 'cause the rest died out,
     Bananas are curved to return when thrown,
     And I deserve a newsgroup of my own. 
                            - Percival Platypus
                              soc.culture.netherlands 


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A WORD TO HUSBANDS 
------------------

     To keep your marriage brimming,
     With love in the loving cup,
     Whenever you're wrong, admit it;
     Whenever you're right, shut up. 
                            - Ogden Nash

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