A haughty old prof who wore tweed
Taught the classics (stuff most folks don’t read.)
A fine poet of note,
The man furtively wrote
Naughty lim’ricks with fervor and speed.
(Tweed Day falls annually on April 3rd.)
A haughty old prof who wore tweed
Taught the classics (stuff most folks don’t read.)
A fine poet of note,
The man furtively wrote
Naughty lim’ricks with fervor and speed.
(Tweed Day falls annually on April 3rd.)
“Tell me, what is this meeting about?”
Yelled the parent, unfazed by the clout
Of the teacher he faced.
“Time’s a-wasting. Make haste!
I must go and attend to my gout.”
Said the teacher, “Your son loves to flout
All our rules and will likely flunk out.
He’s ignoring his studies,
Too busy with buddies,
Preparing for life as a lout.”
A bright future felon named Phil
Liked irking his teachers at will;
Adroitly annoying,
He shined at deploying
His smarts, as he went for the kill.
Said a grad student, seething, “I reckoned
That I’d surely be first, and not second.
My exam’s been mismarked!”
The peeved prof sternly barked:
“Your ego’s remarkably fecund!”
A gal’s parents, upset, then joined forces
In condemning her new choice of courses.
“I’ll be learning collage,
Equine health and dressage.”
“Bad idea,” they nagged. “Please hold your horses.”
(December 13th Is National Day Of The Horse. )
When a gal switched her major to art,
Her parents’ responses were tart:
“Paying bills is a bitch,
So you’d best marry rich.”
“Are you planning to clerk at the mart?”
A boy was bawled out by the nuns
For his sly use of off-color puns.
But he swore “I’m not punning!”
(The fellow was cunning.)
“Besides baking, just what’s done with buns?”
Today (March 14) is “International Day Of Mathematics,” which gives me a good excuse to post this limerick:
A professor would often deride
His students as slackers who lied:
“For math you need smarts.
You’ve no brains. Try the arts.
You want me to pass you? Denied!”
A bee expert’s promised appointment
To be Dean di’n’t pan out — no anointment;
Some serious flaws
In his thesis, the cause…
And so that was the fly in the ointment.
This is a true, personal story. And it remains a vivid memory:
My teacher in pre-school would whine:
“Is your coloring off by design?
You must crayon within
The lines, or your kin
Will be called. I am drawing the line!”
Seems it never occurred to my teacher
That I’m naught but a near-sighted creature,
Who could NOT see those lines.
She missed all the signs.
To this day, I would love to impeach her.
It’s Limerick-Off time, once again. And that means I write a limerick, and you write your own, using the same rhyme word. Then you post your limerick(s) as a comment to this post and, if you’re a Facebook user, on Facebook too.
I hope you’ll join me in writing limericks using CUE or QUEUE at the end of any one line. (Homonyms or homophones are fine.)
The best submission will be crowned Limerick-Off Award Winner. (Here’s last week’s Limerick-Off Award Winner.)
Additionally, you may write themed limericks related to SIN, using any rhyme word. And of course I’ll present an extra award — one for the best SIN-related limerick.
How will your poems be judged? By meter, rhyme, cleverness, and humor. (If you’re feeling a bit fuzzy about limerick writing rules, here’s my How To Write A Limerick article.)
I’ll announce the winners on January 19, 2020, right before I post the next Limerick-Off. So that gives you two full weeks to submit your clever, polished verse. Your submission deadline is Saturday, January 18, 2020 at 10:00 p.m. (Eastern Time.)
Here’s my CUE/QUEUE-rhyme limerick:
A teenager caught playing pool
After ducking out early from school,
Cut classes anew
The next day — right on cue.
And was handed a dunce cap and stool.
And here’s my SIN-themed limerick:
Show me someone who never feels guilt,
And I’ll bet that he sins to the hilt,
That his attitude’s cocky,
His love life is rocky —
Wilted conscience all muddied with silt.
Please feel free to enter my Limerick-Off by posting your limerick(s) in my comments. And if you’re on Facebook, I hope you’ll join my friends in that same activity on my Facebook Limerick-Off post.
To receive an email alert whenever I post a new Limerick-Off, please email Madkane@MadKane.com Subject: MadKane’s Newsletter. Thanks!
Limerick Virtuoso
By Madeleine Begun Kane
A famed violin virtuoso
Said his student’s performance was “so-so.”
“You were NOT even there,”
She replied in despair.
The response from her prof: “I just know so.”
(Inspired by Merriam-Webster Word of the Day – VIRTUOSO)
View my Virtuoso Limerick image here.
Yoga’s been in the news quite a bit lately. Is it good for you? Is it bad for you? Should you purchase some fancy yoga garb and skip the actual yoga?
But the oddest story so far is this one about naked yoga classes in South Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York.
Nude Yoga? Yikes!
By Madeleine Begun Kane
Take a yoga class naked? How scary!
I confess that the thought makes me wary.
Yes I’ll gladly condone
Nude yoga alone.
But in public? I’m sorry. Too hairy.
(If you’re in Brooklyn and want to study yoga in a more modest fashion, check out my niece’s Crown Heights Fitness.)
Related Posts: A Fountain Of Face-Yoga Youth? and Yoga For What?
A teachable moment: When committing crimes, be sure to use spell-check:
Nabbed By A Typo (Limerick)
By Madeleine Begun Kane
A man may end up in a cell
Cuz his parking permit had a tell:
There was one extra letter
In “parking.” It’s better
When forging to learn how to spell.
(This is based on an actual news story: A driver in Hoboken, New Jersey forged a parking permit on his home computer. He might have even gotten away with his scam, had he not spelled “parking” as “parkting.”)
Today’s limerick and haiku theme is bad jobs. Why? Because everyone I know has had at least one really awful job. As for me, I’ve had more bad jobs than I’d care to remember. So here’s a pair of poems about two of them. First, my limerick about substitute teaching:
In my twenties I substitute taught.
‘Tis a challenging job and it’s fraught;
All those calls before dawn
To instruct devil’s spawn
Made me anxious, uptight—overwrought.
And now, my haiku about working in a discount department store:
Discount lingerie:
Folded, painstakingly shelved.
Soon to be litter.
Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to write a limerick or haiku (or both) about bad jobs. When you’ve posted your verse, please return here and add a direct link to your themed poetry.
It’s mid-August, which means back-to-school day is just around the corner. And that in turn means it’s time to start shopping for school supplies: rulers and notebooks and pens and lunch boxes and calculators and computers and school clothes and … bulletproof backpacks???
“We’re just trying to give kids a defensive tool to use in case something does happen,” Curran said of the backpacks, which sell for $175 US. …
Since they started selling online last week, they’ve sold out of their initial stock of several hundred backpacks and are now ordering a new shipment from Massachusetts.
Methinks this calls for a limerick:
Bulletproof Backpacks: In Case Your Kid’s Classmate Is Packing
By Madeleine Begun Kane
Selling bulletproof backpacks? How sad!
Could the safety of schools be so bad,
That parents must buy
Such an item? Oh my!
Are they needed, or just a mad fad?
(You can find more of my school and education humor here.)