A Few Limericks!

I was vaguely familiar with the word limerick and that word’s connection to poetry before last year, but it wasn’t until I came across a poem of Edward Lear’s titled The Nutcrackers and the Sugar-Tongs that I did any sort of research on the thing. And when I say research, I mean the easiest, most superficial of glances into the history of limericks. And when I say the history of limericks, I mean Edward Lear’s history with limericks. And when I say Edward Lear’s history…well, you get the point.

Essentially, Edward Lear was a man who wrote delightfully nonsensical limericks and popularized them for a large swatch of poetry aficionados and laymen alike. As a person whose brain tends to see nonsense as sense and sense as nonsense, this was particularly appealing to me. If nothing else, it wasn’t boring. I’ve since slowed my pace on writing them, but in a month or so I got probably fifty finished. Fifty or thereabouts. I like limericks because they allow me to follow a ridiculous idea no farther than five lines. They make this lazy heart of mine very glad! So, being that it’s a Friday and I have the time, I figured I’d share five of them. Five seems like a good number, and that’s all I’ll say about that: here are a few limericks 🙂

Limerick on Narcissism

There once was a beautiful manatee
Who fell to the trappings of vanity:
A sunken, gold mirror
Descended right near her
And froze in a trance that poor manatee.

Limerick on True Artistry

There was an old magician
Who had a heart condition. 
As he sat for a test
He then clutched at his chest
For a rabbit to show the clinician. 

Limerick on a Real Dumbass

There was a crisscrossed sort of donkey
Whose compass had turned about wonky:
You’d say, “Head for town!”
And he’d start digging down.
“Incorrect,” you would say to the donkey.

Limerick on Authenticity 

I came to a juncture between
The absurd and the awfully-routine:
I hung right to my left
And discovered the heft
On my shoulders nowhere to be seen.

Limerick on the Startling Lack of Alligator-to-English Translators

I once rode in an elevator
Beside a bespectacled gator;
I wanted to ask,
“Why not try out contacts?" 
But did not have a gator translator.