Tag: nonsense verse

More Precious Than Prattle

There’s something about this Strange Prompt that just begs for nonsense ditties, alliteration, and a tigger-like bounce to the scansion. Mine is pretty meaningless, but scroll down for a beautiful love poem from Susie McComb…

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Here is Susie’s far superior take on the prompt:

I know it’s mundane for the moon to wane

I know it’s routine for the stars to gleam
I know I’ll sound trite if I speak of the night
And the fire, and the fear and the far candlelight
But my head’s feeling tight, so I thought that I’d write
Though my gut’s feeling taut at the thought of our fight
And my poetry’s glib as the tinkle of nib
Against inkwell, and simple as baby’s first fib
I’d just like you to know, in the midst of our battle
You’re more lovely than cliché
More precious than prattle.

And here is the ever-wonderful Ann Cuthbert, who has bilingual grandchildren!

Lily speaks Espanglish

¡Oye Mammy! ¡Mira Grandad!
I Lily. Quiero cheese and pan.
I do it ¡síííí! Tú nooooo!
¡Mira! A espider. I escared.
¡Mala! I want chuches. Please.
Watch dibujos, Dora the Explorer.
¡Yá está!

Otter Gibberish

0e5bac450eaadf8fe1ab7904bf6fd918Our prompt today was to start with a line from an existing poem that we could remember without looking it up, and then to write our own poem onwards from there. Many people immediately reached for beautiful, flowing phrases, lines that have remained with them as inspiration and guide…. My immediate thought was ‘Can a parrot eat a carrot standing on his head?’. Spike Milligan. Gotta love him.

Can a parrot eat a carrot standing on his head?

Would a possum scatter blossom on his lover’s bed?

Could a peacock dance to bebop if he’s in the mood?

Would an otter race a stock car, or would he just get booed?

 

Can a raven go clean-shaven to evade the law?

Could an emu change a brake shoe on a four by four?

Can a lobster be a mobster if he has a gun?

Should an otter be a yachter just to have some fun?

 

Can an ostrich free the hostage from the terrorists?

Is a weasel on a Nepalese hill scaling Everest?

Could a pigeon get religion if it were brain-washed?

Would an otter tell a whopper, or the truth at any cost?

 

Can a beaver get Dengue fever sitting in his dam?

A spider in the Hadron collider – does the world go bang?

Would a dolphin and Alec Baldwin have screen chemistry?

Are some otters total tossers, or is that only me?

 

Can a jackal use block and tackle to raise up a wreck?

Does a donkey wear diamante to the discotheque?

Can a panther be a Morris dancer if he has no rhythm?

If an otter flies a helicopter, must I get in with him?

 

 

 

Now Double Your Otter

Halfway through my self-imposed month of otter-themed NaPoWriMo poems! Time for something ridiculous, I feel.

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Double the otter is double the fun,

if you could have two, why would you have one?

 

Double again so your otters are four,

That’s eighty sharp claws on your new parquet floor.

 

But four is no party, let’s make it eight,

And if you consider their full-grown weight,

 

That’s almost three hundred and sixty kilos

of otter, pissing all over the dado.

 

Imagine the stench when you get to sixteen!

Never again will the hearth rug be clean,

 

The destruction that one thirty-two-otter raft

Can wreak on a free-standing cast-iron bath!

 

When the sum of the blighters hits sixty-four,

Flee from the mayhem and move in next door!

 

Just pray that they don’t take up playing bassoon,

This one-hundred-twenty-eight-otter commune,

 

You may be afflicted by pains existential

If otters keep breeding at rates exponential.