Almost a month
The news is spreading. Today the Washington Post Style Invitational had the Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form as the basis for a limerick competition.
It's been almost a month since I wrote any limericks for the OEDILF. I took a break from the coding and wrote a few this evening:
Our abode, dear (that place with the smell),
Is our palace (it's more like a cell)
Where we (plus your mother)
Can be (at each other)
Together (a foretaste of hell).
Aftertaste is the flavour you find
You can taste even after you've dined.
And it pains me to say
That the fast food today
Is what's left after taste's left behind.
Quoth the office wall icon, 'Achieve!
'You can if you'll only believe.'
Then I saw a bright light,
Found the truth in the trite;
Now I walk a new path, 'self-deceive'.
If you say that it must be admitted
That you tried it for size as you knitted,
And your shape for the sweater
Is sure to be better
Then admittedly it'd be fitted.
The agathis leaves, as they grow,
Become smaller and straighter. They go
From a coppery red
To a grey green instead.
It's like autumn if time reversed flow.
You see things -- what they are you can't place.
That's an object agnosia case.
But with prosopagnosia
A person who knows ya
Won't recognize you by your face.
The pet I shall get for my belle
Is a tame Asiatic gazelle
From a small Persian zoo
Where they breed the ahu.
Should I buy her a lion as well?
Aholiab: his life we'll condense
To 'a weaver'. You'll wonder from whence
Comes his fame. He's renowned
As a man who had found
His religious experience in tents.
Comments
These remind me of a more clever and more disciplined Ogden Nash. Darker but also deeper. A selection of these would be a terrific short book - you know, the kind they sell near the registers - some illustrated and some not.
I enjoy your obvious enjoyment.
Thank you jk. It's a major boost to receive praise from the erudite.
I'm having a circus-full of fun with OEDILF project. I'm delighted to find there's an audience for my warped words.
Hey, virge, this is not a limerick:
Aholiab: his life we'll condense
To 'a weaver'. You'll wonder from whence
Comes his fame. He's renowned
As a man who had found
His religious experience in tents.
It follows the rhyme scheme and has the requisite number of syllables, but you can't split lines like that. You have to be able to say a limerick in a singsong and have it make sense, or it's not a limerick.
Thanks marcy.
The enjambment at the end of line 2 is a flaw in this limerick.
There are fine examples of limericks where lines 1 and 2 form a complete thought and fail to make sense in isolation. Similarly there are good limericks where lines 3-4, 4-5, or even 3-4-5 must be taken as a complete unit. Breaking a phrase at 2-3 (without humorous intent) causes a discontinuity that messes with the character of the limerick.
I'll raise this as a forum topic on OEDILF.COM.
Virge:
I am unable to log in at OEDILF site.
aol says it possibly moved or is no longer in service?
Joker.com (our domain name registration service) has been having troubles.
The computer that hosts the OEDILF is still up and running, but the servers that translate our domain name (oedilf.com) into the correct address for our host computer have problems.
We'll just have to hope that Joker gets things ironed out soon.