L.A. Mereoie: Two Clerihews
Thomas Hood
Found double vision good.
Though usually ailing
His puns were unfailing.
Lewis Carroll
Hid in don's apparel
Both logical bent
And nonsensical dent.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Tom Schmidt: Three Haiku
fingers slip from cliff
how unfortunate that shit
ends up one's last word
August occasion,
bells toll for school to resume –
my pupils contract
dog notes metaphor,
stops, smells the roses, then gulps
cat turd, squats and grins
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Henry Stimpson: To His In-Box
Oh, here’s more email, like death and taxes.
I long sometimes for the Age of Faxes.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Jerome Betts: Envoi Of An Illuminating Paradox
“S. J. Dark Ltd . . . Emergency Lighting
Contractor . . . ” – Logo on van
Prince, those who rise before the lark
But find their system’s vital spark
Gone missing in the pitch-black night
Repeat this mantra . . . Dark Is Light.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Alex Steelsmith: Crime Seen
(In his masterpiece The Raft of the Medusa,
Théodore Géricault depicted 15 survivors of a
shipwrecked French frigate who infamously
escaped starvation by resorting to cannibalism.
Fellow artist Eugène Delacroix was overwhelmed
when he saw the painting, and later described his
reaction in his journal: “when I came out of the
studio I started running like a madman and did
not stop till I reached my own room.” )
Heebily-jeebily,
Théodore Géricault
paints a taboo-breaking
crew on a raft;
Delacroix, cultured and
nonanthropophagous,
runs from the scene of the
crime like he’s daft.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
L. A. Mereoie: Canine Cuisine
(On reading limericks promoting dog food
submitted by the readers of the Molassine
Company’s magazine over a hundred years ago.)
The Food Of Love?
Is your springer, at stud, lacking zest?
Faint of heart? Short of breath? Loud of chest?
The cure for his fix
Is our Oyster-Rich Mix
Until . . . No, Hector, no! Let them rest!’
A Rising Plunger
That water-shy bitch of Sir Clive’s
In field trials could only score fives,
But, after a meal
Of our Biscuit With Seal,
Now gets tens with her high-tariff dives.
