A lesson in limericks

Poetry writing has never been my strength. I can appreciate a good poem, of course, but don’t ask me to write one. Unless it’s a limerick.

Typically a limerick is a stanza of five lines with the first, second and fifth rhyming with each other. The third and fourth rhyme with each other. Back in the early days of limericks the first and fifth line ended with the same word. Limericks are witty, humorous and full of nonsense, kind of like me. What’s not to like about this style of poetry?

A character in one of my favorite book series, “The Cat Who ...” by Lillian Jackson Braun, wrote a column dedicated solely to limericks. I might not have a column, per say, but I do have this blog. Here are some limericks I find entertaining.

The limerick packs laughs anatomical                
In space that is quite economical,
But the good ones I've seen
So seldom are clean,
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.
Readers be warned. Limericks can be raunchy.

There was a Young Person of Smyrna
Whose grandmother threatened to burn her;
But she seized on the cat,
and said 'Granny, burn that!
You incongruous old woman of Smyrna!'
My granny used to threaten to spank me. Usually she did spank me. We didn’t have a cat handy.

There once was a man from Nantucket
Who kept all his gold in a bucket.
But his daughter, named Nan,
Ran away with a man
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.
My mother used to tell me a dirtier version of this one. We’ll leave it at that.

There was an old man from Peru,
who dreamed he was eating his shoe.
He awoke in the night
with a terrible fright
and found out that it was quite true.
This is one of my favorite limericks. My mom often recited it, and I used to hear it in school.

And now introducing my very own limerick.
There once was a nice girl named Toni
Who only ate Kraft macaroni
She refused to eat meat
Abhorred fruits and sweets
Her tombstone said, "Here lies Miss Bony."