Do you have a favorite humorous poem?

Question

I used to love hearing my brother recite "The Cremation of Sam McGhee," but my all-time favorite is "Always Saying No," by Edgar Guest. If you're not familiar, allow me to recite as much as I can remember of it:

Folks are queer as they can be / always saying Don't! to me.
Don't do this and don't do that, / don't annoy or tease the cat.
Don't throw stones or climb the tree. / Don't do anything at all. Gee.
Seems like when I want to play, / Don't! is all that they can say.

Grannie Annie, you're just loaded with talent! I'd love to have you living near me!

Jack P, you do have a flair for limericks, don't you?

Redflower, I'd seen the one about the two dead boys before. You can find it in Bartlett's, but I don't know who wrote it, either. Your Gerleaps was delightful.

Answer 1

1) Teenage Angst, by me

Black and white,
Saturday Night,
Dozens of people below.
A boy and me
In the balcony,
Not watching the show.

2) Adventure on All Hallow's Eve, by me

I saw a statue Halloween night.
Glowing with an eerie light.
It began to move,
straight towards me.
Or rather....where I used to be.

3) Tragedy in Nine Words, by me

Candle gutters.
Moth flutters.
Too closely flitters.
Mothwing fritters.

4) Title unremembered but written by Ogden Nash

I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
And unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all!

Answer 2

The Glory of The Garden
OUR England is a garden that is full of stately views,
Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues,
With statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by;
But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye.
For where the old thick laurels grow, along the thin red wall,
You'll find the tool- and potting-sheds which are the heart of all
The cold-frames and the hot-houses, the dung-pits and the tanks,
The rollers, carts, and drain-pipes, with the barrows and the planks.

And there you'll see the gardeners, the men and 'prentice boys
Told off to do as they are bid and do it without noise ;
For, except when seeds are planted and we shout to scare the birds,
The Glory of the Garden it abideth not in words.
And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose,
And some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows ;
But they can roll and trim the lawns and sift the sand and loam,
For the Glory of the Garden occupieth all who come.

Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing:-" Oh, how beautiful," and sitting in the shade
While better men than we go out and start their working lives
At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives.
There's not a pair of legs so thin, there's not a head so thick,
There's not a hand so weak and white, nor yet a heart so sick
But it can find some needful job that's crying to be done,
For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.

Then seek your job with thankfulness and work till further orders,
If it's only netting strawberries or killing slugs on borders;
And when your back stops aching and your hands begin to harden,
You will find yourself a partner In the Glory of the Garden.
Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden that it may not pass away!

And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away !

Answer 3

Four Limericks on Life

He goes by the surname of Fauna;
From platypus to the iguana:
He hunts and he stalks
And he ceaselessly talks
Of death and the killing he want'ta.

She goes by the surname of Flora.
She's plankton; she's trees, a plethora,
But lives in a dread
Avoiding his tread;
He's Sodom; he's death; he's Gomorrah!

He eats, he digests, he excretes her;
She's worried each time that he meets her.
It's not so dismaying
To find him decaying:
His syrup of nitrogen treats her.

Submerged in a hostile reality
Humanity flirts with finality.
He yearns to transcend
But his carnal self wins
And he wastes all his life in banality.

Copyright 2002 Jack P

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Dog-Tired, Dog-eared and Dogmatic


A schoolmarmish lady in Zuni
Had canines subversive and loony;
Her Communist felines
Made neighborhood beelines
With doctrines both outworn and puny.

The KGB cat was a lean
And speckled-nosed beauty serene
In appearance alone
For her countenance shown
Multi-faceted plots as she preened.

Her Weathercat history was tops.
She’d sprayed on dozens of cops
With a Commie aroma
But joined Sertoma
Cavorting with phonies and fops.

The ringleader hound was a red
And curly haired rascal it’s said
Whose Trotskyish leanings
And Maoish gleanings
Were pondered curled up on the bed.

Princess Redfeather, they tells
Of this curly red b*tch of the cells,
Forsook her fine lineage
To sip of the vintage
of Lenin, and Gulags and hells.

The worst of the felines, Bearboy:
Striped and cross-eyed and coy;
Politically weak,
Had claws that could tweak
Bourgeoise carpet, and bedspread, with joy.

The Uncle-Tom dog of the hut
Was Ernie, the gray-bearded mutt;
Dog-tired, and dogmatic,
He thought,”Problematic:
dog-eared dialectic and glut.”

The Uncle-Tom dog she called Ernie
Began as a dog-pound attorney
Commuted from gassing
He pondered in passing
Discretion’s demands for a journey.

A calico hound lying dormant,
Most likely a police informant:
A capitalist clown
Took his food lying down
Resisting the commie allurement.

The Stalinish kittenish spies
Spread foment and torment and lies
To the Indian curs
And mutts that were hers
And War-Gods high up on the rise.

Princess and Ernie and, Spot,
And Chester, the narc-dog; the lot:
For half a piaster
Would bring a disaster
To Zuni, once called Camelot.

Copyright 2001 Jack P

Answer 4

On the chest of a barmaid from Vale
Was tattooed all the prices of ale
and on her behind, for the sake of the blind
was precisely the same but in Braille

Answer 5

^I wrote this in grade school many years ago in another century. OMG, reality check.

Warning: hypochondriacs please do not read..

GERLEAPS

Gerleaps is a dreaded fictitious disease
that starts off with a sneeze
then your eyeballs roll about
until you’re ready to shout
your skin turns orange yellow
and your feet feel just like Jell-O
when your thumb nails turn bluish green
your blood will get thick as cream
that’s the dreaded fictitious disease called Gerleaps
doesn’t it give you the creeps
______________________________________________
Poet Unknown

ONE BRIGHT DAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
TWO DEAD BOYS GOT UP TO FIGHT
BACK TO BACK THEY FACED EACH OTHER
DREW THEIR SWORDS AND SHOT ONE ANOTHER
A DEAF POLICEMAN HEARD THE NOISE
AND CAME AROUND TO THE TWO DEAD BOYS
IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE MY STORY IS TRUE
ASK THE BLIND MAN HE SAW IT TOO

Answer 6

I will have to say that Grannie Annie has some fun stuff there...good goin'
'Candy's Handy,
but
Liquor's Quicker. '

I believe that is Nash, but it could be Coward....I am sure I will find out within seconds of posting.

Answer 7

Resume by Dorothy Parker (short, but funny), Nobody Loses All the Time by e.e. cummings.
These are just off the top of my head. I'll add things as I think of them.

Answer 8

It's one written by Stephen Crane, the author of "The Red Badge of Courage":
"I stood upon a high place and saw below me many devils,
Leaping, dancing and carousing in sin.
One looked up and said: 'Comrade! Brother!'. "
I smile and think of it everytime I run into another one of the "holier than thou" crowd.

Answer 9

Stealing this from my father in-law.
There was a girl from St. Paul.
She wore a paper dress to the ball.
Her dress caught afire.
Burnt her entire.
Front page.
Sport section.
And all.

Answer 10

I do, but have no idea who wrote it..

Good night sleep tight
don't let the bedbugs bite
But if they do, get your shoe
and hit them til they're black and blue..