Poets United’s prompt word today is omniscience, and it asks us to write a poem with authority:
Omniscient About Omniscience? (Limerick)
By Madeleine Begun Kane
Omniscience is fine when in verse
And in fiction, but few things are worse
Than know-it-all guys
Dispensing big lies.
Take your fake expertise and disperse!
Wonder Wednesday, over at Poets United, prompts us to write a poem about bridges or bridging gaps. I decided to cross that bridge with a limerick:
Knotty Negotiations
By Madeleine Begun Kane
It’s a challenge to bridge the large gap
Between parties who’d rather just flap
And complain that they’re right,
While their rivals just fight
Cuz they’re mean. So I’d rather just nap.
Poets United has a fun vice-versa challenge this week: Use all four of these words in any type of poem: Allow, Deny, Harsh, & Gentle. Here’s what I came up with:
Mental Limerick
By Madeleine Begun Kane
A man who denied being “mental,”
Was at times rather harsh, sometimes gentle.
He had one sacred cow:
He would never allow
A critique of his units parental.
In its latest Thursday Think Tank, Poets United prompts our muses with the word “strings.” It struck a chord with me, inspiring this limerick tale of an unstrung cellist:
Last-String Limerick
By Madeleine Begun Kane
“That conductor has strung me along,”
Said a cellist. “He’s doing me wrong.
He promised first chair,
But instead I’m nowhere:
Stuck in back, the last stand, near the gong.”
(Related Limericks: Musical Chairs; Musical Faux Pas; and Musical Discord.)
I was honored to be interviewed as part of Poets United “Life of a Poet” series. It’s fairly comprehensive and includes some fun photos and limericks. So if you’d like to know some of my deep, dark secrets, here it is. :)
My big thanks to Poets United and especially to my interviewer Sherry Blue Sky. She did a great job!
Why is this limerick untitled? Because Thursday Think Tank has prompted us to write an untitled poem. Writing without a title frees up our creative juices … at least that’s the theory:
Untitled Limerick
By Madeleine Begun Kane
To title a verse can be hard —
A challenge for most ev’ry bard.
But a title-less work
Can drive me berserk.
It feels jarring and fake-avant-garde.
Poetry prompts can serve up everything from fun inspiration to unsettling memories. For instance, the shadows prompt courtesy of Poets United Thursday Think Tank brought back a wistful early childhood memory of my late father Ernest Begun and Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses. More specifically, the two of us reciting my favorite childhood poem, My Shadow.
I’m certain that the many hours we spent poring over that Stevenson volume had lots to do with my own versifying. And so, this haiku:
Robert Stevenson’s
I have a little shadow…
My dad’s knee at three.
Mad Kane (Madeleine Begun Kane) is a writer, musician, and "recovering lawyer." She won the Robert Benchley Society Award For Humor and enjoys writing limericks, song parodies, and current events haiku.
You can email her at madkane@madkane.com, visit her political humor blog, or stop by her home page.
