Young Froggie went courting one day
With a white water plantain bouquet.
He said, “Marry me, do.”
She replied, “Marry you?
That’s pondweed, you cheapskate! No way!”
“I have prayed,” said a mystic named Keating,
“For the reason that life is so fleeting,
And I’m just on the brink
Of an answer, I think,
If the Lord . . .” (here his heart just stopped beating).
We've fat jaded ladies—a hoard!
But our health spa's expenses have soared.
My partner said, quote:
"We should just buy a boat,
And board the broad bored broads aboard."
There was a young fellow of Putney
Who would eat only lentils and chutney.
He chose to migrate
To an Indian state,
But he died there of terrible glutney.
I arrived at the Hotel Belle Vue
With my kanga and motorbike too.
Said the doorman, “Good day!
Am I right when I say
That you’re needing a vroom with a roo?”
There are three thousand girls in distress
In a basement at USPS,
Where the postmaster hides
All the mail-order brides
That were lacking a proper address.
Though you don’t know quite why or quite what,
You are drawn by this feeling you’ve got.
That’s what’s called “intuition”:
A compelling suspicion
That your mind has a plan you do not.
If a thought that’s been thought has been “thunk”
Have those dreams that we’ve sought all been “sunk”?
Should “we ought” be “we unk”?
Can what’s fought be what’s “funk”?
And those stocks that we bought, were they “bunk”?
A preposterous father named Spencer
Got his daughter deprogrammed from Mensa.
The group, he construed,
Had darkened her mood--
Now she’s lighter by far, she’s just denser.
The Darwin debate never ceases,
For he wounded the pride of our species
When he made you and me
Share the family tree
With those monkeys that love to fling faeces.
The people who live in glass houses
Should watch what they do with their spouses:
Don’t smoke outlawed grasses,
Throw stones, or break glasses,
And for God’s sake don’t take off your trouses.
An ardent young Buddhist named Guy
Signed up as a monk on the sly,
But his dear mother Lana
Said, “Screw your nirvana:
Wait ‘til somebody loses an I . . .”
When my ditties were failing pathetically,
I was told I should think arithmetically.
They said, "Count out the meter,
So the verses run sweeter":
Meter rules are the yardstick, poetically.
Two hookers named Rose and Marie
Were drowned in a whirlpool at sea.
Now the other girls try
To remain safe and dry
On the land -- to avoid whirled whore three.
I've no fear of the mean streets of Skokie —
I'm adept at concealed karaoke:
If I'm under attack,
There's a switch that I whack —
Then it blares out a loud "Hokey Pokey".
The archaic afront means "afore."
It's not an "affront" (one F more),
So don't blow your stack,
Or be taken aback,
For afront was "in front" (but before).
A cow in a field cried, “Awake!
We have all made a ghastly mistake.
I’ve been forced to conclude
That this herd has been screwed--
We’re not here to make shakes, but for steak.”
An abstemious heiress named Best
Was ignorant how to invest.
She put all of her money
Into locusts and honey:
The losses were hard to digest.
The in-crowd from Cassiopeia
Visit England in spaceships each yeia.
Do you want to know why?
It's the one place nearby
Where they still can get decent warm beia.
A lover lamenting his fate
Once lept from the Empire State
Due to heartless young Pam.
She did not give a damn,
But her brothers both thought it was great.
Though our folks love to shoot and to bet,
There's a plan the state hasn't tried yet:
It could raise mean IQ,
And increase funding too,
If it sponsored some Russian Roulette.
In a thunderstorm, dear Uncle Bart
Was struck down playing “How Great Thou Art”
For good cheer, far from home,
On his new metal comb--
An ironical way to depart.
There once was a potter named Bess
Who said, “Practice, although you’ll make mess.
Your creations might suck,
But do not curse your luck,
For to suck is halfway to success.”
A sailing ship skipper of note
Who encountered rebellion afloat,
Overwhelmed by demands,
Placed his head in his hands--
Then his hands’ heads he hanged from the boat.
“Now, Cubs, don’t those humans look chunky?"
Said a grisly bear, hirsute and hunky,
"And I bet they taste sweet,
But do not touch the meat--
It’s genetic’lly modified monkey.”
An unscrupulous bird is the stork:
He dines with no knife and no fork;
No agency vets
All those newborns he gets,
And when asked where they’re from, he won’t tork.
Affectionateness is a virtue
To which I would like to alert you.
It's rather like gin:
Too much does you in,
But I don't think a little would hurt you.
Sylvester found out his wife, Lisa,
Had employed a mean underworld geezer
To kill him – how bad!
But he really got mad
When he noticed it charged on his Visa.
I once knew a man who was poor
Who used to sell dogs door to door.
If you asked, "Is this legal?"
He'd slip you a beagle,
Saying, "Gift for your wife – say no more!"
Epitaph for the Generic Citizen
My employers all thought they could own me,
And my relatives wanted to stone me;
Life’s a bitch, as they say,
And I found it that way,
Still, you have my permission to clone me.
You are welcome to repost any of my limericks that I have posted here on your web page as long as you clearly credit me – Graham Lester – as the author
