Definitely Limericks
I wrote these for the Omnificent English Dictionary in English Form, a magnificent, ambitious, and slightly insane attempt to write a limerick for every word in the English language, one letter group at a time. You can see my additions and revisions there, but I like to keep them here as well; the menu below leads to permanent pages for each letter group. You can also see some co-written pieces and an area especially aimed at OEDILFers.
Subjecting a text to critique
Means pointing out which parts are weak—
Overall or one line—
And which parts are fine.
This punchline could do with a tweak.
We are gods when our children are three.
When they’re ten, we’re the top of their tree.
But once they’re fourteen,
They’d prefer us unseen:
“Mum and Dad, you’re embarrassing me!”
These emperors tower over all
Where the blizzards relentlessly squall.
In the bleak August night,
Male penguins sit tight
On their eggs, heeding fatherhood’s call.
We excel at emission of gas,
And engage in it daily, en masse,
Spewing dangerous fumes
In voluminous plumes
From our cars and our chimneys. Alas!
To judge by our carbon emissions,
It seems that our only ambition’s
To burn all the oil
And coal in the soil
And weather the climate conditions.
Though maintaining a boastful exterior,
We fear others are largely superior.
The cultural cringe
Is the name for our whinge
That Australian life is inferior.
Pretty girls, whose enchanting “come hither”
Enticements send boys yon and thither,
Find none of that lasts.
Those who charmed in their pasts,
In decrepitude, find that they wither.
He loves keyboards and moogs a whole heap.
Any synth-less song sends him to sleep.
He adores electronica.
Just sample his moniker:
DJ Digital, Lord of the Bleep.
In the Eighties, we worshipped John Hughes,
“Choose Life” T-shirts, those velcro-tab shoes,
New Romantics, E.T.,
And the brand-new PC
With a whole 16K you could use.
Eighties politics sure had it all
For conservatives: Reagan walked tall,
Thatcher privatized Britain,
And Russia was gittin’
Its ass kicked—goodbye, Berlin Wall.
The Falklands, Chernobyl, the war
In Afghanistan, Challenger, or
“Greed is good”—take your pick,
It could all make you sick,
So I won’t be remembering more.
