Arggg! Bakhesh beat me to it.
So I have to resort to:
As I was standing in the street,
As quiet as could be
A great big ugly man came up
And tied his horse to me.
From one of my fave books as a child.
I’ve always snickered at Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” – I mean, come on!
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
What a drip. I actually use that third line when I reference other waaaayyy melodramatic writing.
Ogden Nash is great!
*The Panther
The panther is like a leopard,
Except it hasn’t been peppered.
Should you behold a panther crouch,
Prepare to say Ouch.
Better yet, if called by a panther,
Don’t anther.
Reflections on Ice-Breaking
Candy is dandy
But liquor is quicker
The Termite
Some primal termite knocked on wood
And tasted it, and found it good!
And that is why your Cousin May
Fell through the parlor floor today.*
Something that just amuses me:
A thousand hairy cannibals
Sitting down to lunch.
Gobble gobble, glup glup
Munch munch munch.
(maybe by Spike Milligan?)
and more in the spirit of the OP, from Browning’s “Pippa Passes”
Sing to the bats’ sleek sisterhoods
Full complines with gallantry:
Then, owls and bats, cowls and twats,
Monks and nuns, in a cloister’s moods,
Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry!
Poor Browning thought a twat was an article of nun’s clothing, and sometimes you will find that definition in the dictionary because of him.
(Incidentally, the next thing in the poem is a stage direction that Pippa undresses.)
Lines and Squares by A.A. Milne.
From deep in the crypt at St. Giles
Came a scream that resounded for miles.
Said the Vicar “Good gracious!
Has Father Ignatius
Forgotten the Bishop has piles?”
My second has been spoilered due to lewdness and depravity:
There was a young girl from Uttoxeter
Who was the most exquisite cock-sitter:
With her prehensile hole
She enveloped my pole,
And squirmed up and down as my rocks hit her.
No Dorothy Parker yet?! I’m shocked, shocked I tells ya.
Bric-a-Brac
Little things that no one needs-
Little things to joke about-
Little landscapes, done in beads.
Little morals, woven out,
Little wreaths of gilded grass,
Little brigs of whittled oak
Bottled painfully in glass;
These are made by lonely folk.
Lonely folk have lines of days
Long and faltering and thin;
Therefore- little wax bouquets,
Prayers cut upon a pin,
Little maps of pinkish lands,
Little charts of curly seas,
Little plats of linen strands,
Little verses, such as these.
Bubble Trouble by Margret Mahy
It’s just too darn long to write here, but it’s a good one!
(you know, the plum one?)
There are holes in the sky
Where the rain gets in.
But they’re ever so small.
That’s why rain is thin.
(Spike Milligan)
BWA HA HA HA HA! Oh, man, that kills me. I loathe “This Is Just To Say”, and the first parody on that page is just so perfect! Thanks for sharing that with us!
From a greeting card:
Don’t kiss your honey
When your nose is runny
You might think it’s funny
But it’s snot.
And another, from The House At Pooh Corner:
*The more it snows
(Tiddely pom)
The more it goes
(Tiddely pom)
The more it goes
(Tiddely pom)
On snowing
And nobody knows
(Tiddely pom)
How cold my toes
(Tiddely pom)
How cold my toes
(Tiddely pom)
Are growing*
I went to college in Syracuse and I pretty much recited this poem to myself on my way to class every day from October through April for four years. The "tiddely pom"s just slay me.
The pretty lady donned her skates
upon the ice to frisk
Wasn’t she a silly girl
Her little *?
Unknown
My hair goes to my toes
I never wears no clothes
I wraps my hair
Around my bare
And down the road I goes
Shel Silverstein
Did you ever wonder where a booger came from?
It crawled out of your brain and turned to gum.
A sudden wind and it’sblown out in a sneeze.
And lands on a slice of pizza cheese.
A hand pick it up and it goes for a ride.
It see’s a mouth and goes back inside.
And now the booger has been swallowed.
The digestive track is what it followed.
Through the stomach and into the gut.
It’s goin’ all the way no matter what.
The booger can now be described in one word.
Our friend is now a little turd.
It lands in the toilet with a splash and a flush.
And goes to the sewer and turns to mush.
Roadwalker
"…pitched on his head,
And pumped full of lead,
Was Dangerous Dan McGrew. - Robert Service
Banana Skin, by Chefguy
It’s a peeling,
But it’s not appealing.
I’t a peeling,
But it’s not appealiang.
(repeat until you just have to laugh at it)
A lesbian lass of Khartoum
Once took a fag up to her room,
And they argued all night
Over who had the right
To do what, and with which, and to whom!
A lady while dining at Crewe,
Found an elephant’s dong in her stew,
Said the waiter, “Don’t shout,
Or wave it about,
Or the others will all want one too!”
When I was in fifth grade, this actually was read in my junior high English class, not once, but twice! The teacher seemed completely unaware of the second, less savory interpritation, and, after the intial reading, (which had everyone in the class nearly cracking up, doing all they could to contain themselves), she insisted upon reading it through again, so that we could “pay special attention to the personification” of the shark. :rolleyes:
Unfortunately, my best friend and I made eye contact during the second reading, and simultaniously burst out laughing. This was met with dead silence, and the threat of, “if you can’t behave like fifth graders, you’ll have to sit out in the hallway until you feel you can.”
Anyway, with out further adieu, what my friends and I have always called “The Shark Poem.” Tell me honestly if you wouldn’t have burst out laughing as this was enthusiastically read to you-- at any age:
A trecherous monster is the shark
He never makes the least remark
And when he sees you on the sand
He doesn’t seem to want to land
He watches you take of your clothes
And not the least excitement shows
His eyes do not grow bright or roll
He has astounding self control…
That’s all I can remember. If anybody knows the last couple lines, I’d be much obliged, or the author, for that matter. None of my classmates can remember it, and I’d love to be able to send them the missing lines.
My sister read Ogden Nash’s Tin Wedding Whistle at my wedding. My favorite lines (“But how contentedly I view / Any room containing you”) still make me smile/giggle. http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=491
Our Bog Is Dood by Stevie Smith
Our Bog is dood, our Bog is dood,
They lisped in accents mild,
But when I asked them to explain
They grew a little wild.
How do you know your Bog is dood
My darling little child?
Read the rest here…
Hark! to the whimper of the seagull
He weeps becaus he’s not an ea-gull.
Suppose you were, you silly seagull;
Could you explain it to your she-gull?
and . . .
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.
And from Isaac Asimov:
On Saturn the sexes are three
Which makes it quite awkward, you see.
For performing con brio
requires a trio
(and it even takes two for a pee).