Good morning Doug and other limerick lovers. Here are some you may have missed plus a couple of new ones.
This one is a piece of whimsy due to the syllables of the woman’s name fitting in with the first line of a limerick:
Edna St Vincent Millay
went down to the river one day
like Moses she left
her fans were bereft:
for Sprinsteen had swept her away.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edna_St._Vincent_Millay
This one is about my nightmares to do with being famous
Frankly My Dear, I don’t Give a Damn
I farted on live television
I’m the object of national derision
I may not have sinned
But I’m Gone with the Wind
– and that’s a disastrous excision.
(I wanted a last word that was more punchy, indicating either the act of eructation or the idea of letting go or sending forth – but have concluded that such a word does not exist)
Here’s today’s effort:
In my youth I was desperately drawn
to the foxgloves that stand on the lawn
Demoiselle d’Avignon
with my dressing-gown on
In the dew I am almost reborn.
and this one…
Bi-polar explorers of clink
who have taken to tablets and drink
The call of the wild
and the wail of the child
are not so opposed as you’d think.
This is a poem about manic depression but also about how we classify certain things as being “opposite” in our minds which are in fact parts of each other. It’s a plea for harmony.
Thoughts of the Day
“What’s the thought for the day, Liz?” I hear you cry. I should have been a DJ. This is the thought for the day. It’s about the sort of writer I am and am not. I am given to understand that there are writers who decide they’re going to write a novel, plan the novel and spend a certain lenght of time each day writing the novel. They may even have a quota of words. How do they do this??? I can decide as often as I like that I’m going to write a novel. I may even start it, as I have done many times. I may even, in an access of hitherto-unsuspected bloody-mindedness, finish the damned thing. But it is not what I meant to write. That is not it, at all, as TS Eliot said. That is not it, at all.
So I am not that kind of writer. All I can do is sit at home and wait, see what visitors come to my door. I can’t make them come, no matter how many desperate messages I may leave on their answerphone. In fact, every time I phone, they are out of town.
So this is a bit hopeless. I’m 51 years old and I don’t know what kind of writer I am. I only know what i am not.
But perhaps this is not negligible. A (Sherlock) Holmesian approach to enlightenment: when you have eliminated all those things which you are not, whatever remains, however improbable, is the Self.
en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes#
Remains of the Day. I enjoyed this but found it somewhat studied. Yes, I know that’s how the character is but I found the writer to be that, as well.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Remains_of_the_Day
And whence this thought about Remains of the Day? I suppose feeling that I’m getting on in years and had better get a bloody move-on. Just as I felt the biological clock ticking in my 30’s, so now I feel the creative clock ticking. I’m not quite at the remains of the day, more like about 3 pm. Tea time.
Time is an illusion. Tea time doubly so. thanks fo Douglas Adams. Look it up yourselves. I’m still waiting for my supply of lemon-soaked paper napkins, and that is taking up all my processing-power.
Sarada Gray 