Riddles
I always run but never walk
I often murmur, never talk
I have a bed but never sleep
I have a mouth but never eat
In marble walls as white as milk
Lined with a skin as soft as silk
Within a fountain crystal clear
A golden apple doth appear
No walls there are to this stronghold
Yet thieves break in and steal the gold
If you're feeling cannelloni
There's mostarda di Cremona
Tell the one who zabaglione
That I can be sfogliatelle
(@lucyfishwife)
Tell him life is all farfalle
Pomodori, papardelle
Da mi vostri ditalini
Swear eternal fedelini
(LF)
Everything will be just fine
With Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein.
We will not vote, but we'll still pay
Our future's in the EEA.
(Celestial Weasel)
Our Father who art in Hendon
Harrow Road be thy name
thy Kingston come, thy Wimbledon
In Erith as it is in Hendon
give us this day our Berkhamsted
And forgive us our Westminsters
As we forgive those who Westminster against us
Lead us not into Temple Station
But deliver us from Ealing
For thine is the Kingston
The Purley and the Crawley
For Iver and Iver, Crouch End.
Bryozoans
They might be small and simple,
They might not do a lot,
Just sitting shifting plankton
In some gloomy benthic spot,
But you can’t beat Nature’s logic –
She’ll always play the ace,
Cos for guts and arms in boxes
She’s found the ideal place.
For when you think about it,
Where better could they be
Than stuck to bits of scallop
At the bottom of the sea?
(@markward63)
Few thought him even a starter –
There were many who thought themselves smarter,
But he ended PM,
CH and OM,
An Earl and a Knight of the Garter.
A little old lady, Miss Brine
Accepted an invite to dine
They gave her a meal
Of fish-skin and peel
And omitted to pass her the wine.
(LF)
From here you can glimpse her downstream, her far charm,
Liberty, tiny woman in the mist –
You cannot see the torch – raising her arm
Lorn, bold, as if saluting with her fist.
(Thom Gunn)
Dear Abby, I thought I would write
To confess. Please consider my plight:
I had sex with my ex;
We were drunk—it's complex.
Please advise. Signed, Chagrined and Contrite.
(Jane Auerbach)
Erin
...Thy round towers are crumbling away ;
Proud castles sink fast in decay ;
The palace is gone,
And where beauty shone,
Remains a lone hillock of clay.
(Irish patriot Dr TCS Corry)
You can’t remember which is which
Or where you put the one you need
Or else you’ve left the thing at home
Chargers really are a bitch.
(LF)
EmphasisHe's stealthily pernicious,
But I'll know 'him when I see 'im.
That miscreant who furnishes,
Defective linoleum.
She never lived in stasis,
She was prone to prance and babble,
And always the emphasis
Was on the wrong syllable.
(LF)
In Hampshire a UKIP contender,
Whose chances were anyway slender,
Was given the boot
For saying he'd shoot
The Tory incumbent defender.
(Mick Twister @twitmericks)
Of parties there used to be two.
Now what's a poor voter to do?
It's so hard to select
Which is best to elect –
I don't really trust any, do you?
(PD)
The world is all nonsense and noise
Fantoccini, or Ombres Chinoises
Mere pantomime mummery
Puppet-show flummery
A magical lantern, confounding the sight
Like players or puppets, we move
On the wires of ambition and love
Poets write wittily,
Maidens look prettily,
'Till death drops the curtain—all's over—good night!"
(Pierce Egan)
There once was a sculptor named Phidias
Whose manners in art were invidious
He carved Aphrodite
Without any nightie,
Which startled the ultrafastidious.
The deadly bubonic disease
Was carried to Europe by fleas
From gerbils, not rats,
According to stats
Collected from rings on old trees.
(Mick Twister @twitmericks)
Must give it back, or go to prison.
In pursuit of the utmost frivolity,
A poet with excess of jollity,
Wrote down, with eyes shielded,
Some words which then yielded
A haiku of questionable quality.
(PE)
I tried to write one.
It didn't have enough lines.
Not a Limerick.
(PE)
Said a bridge player splattered with gore
looking down at the corpse on the floor:
‘De mortuis nil
nisi bonum – but still,
he’s been caught out revoking before.’
(Via Katharine Whitehorn)
There was a commuter from Ewell,
Who feeling in need of renewal,
Commuted, poor sinner,
from Ewell to Pinner,
How fate is vindictively cruel!
(AL)
Twinkle twinkle, small 5p
How I wonder why you be.
How I loathe thee 5p-piece—
How I dream of thy decease!
Fiddly, fumbly, far too small,
Through my fingers apt to fall.
(Lucy Fishwife/Chris Maslanka)
When falling through an atmosphere
You don't keep getting faster,
Eventually you reach a speed
Where friction is the master.
(ND)
My vacuum has a healthy roar,
and it's 1200W.
I use it for the kitchen floor,
and hard-to-get-at spots.
(PE)
I think that I shall never see
A thing as lovely as a tree
I think, unless the billboards fall,
I shall not see a tree at all.
(Ogden Nash)
When they beat your door down
And drag you away to an unknown fate,
That's the time to start complaining
About a Police State.
(TD)
Some men make gods of red and blue
to rob our Saviour of this due.
The good shall go to heaven, the fell
Blasts of thy wrath shall send to hell.
(Thomas Babington Macaulay aged six and a half)
If I were Fortune - which I'm not -
B should enjoy A's happy lot,
And A should die in miserie -
That is, assuming I am B.
(via TI)
The rain it raineth all around
Upon the just and unjust fella,
But more upon the just because
The unjust has the just’s umbrella.
After the rise, the fall
After the boom, the slump.
You dance with the Prince at the ball
Then come down to earth with a bump.
(Anon/LF)
Conspiracy Fruitcake (recipe)
Half a dozen nuts (assorted)
Three or more matching dates
Currants of suspicion and paranoia
Mix well. Half-bake, and decorate attractively.
(RN)
The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
Till peasants learn to read and write
And build a welfare state.
(via RG)
These shades are 'designer',
it says so on the sign
Where I got them in that Shell garage,
For three ninety-nine.
(Alan McGinn @Chainsaw_McGinn)
What is matter?
Never mind.
What is mind?
No matter.
Thus Departed Derek
Derek lives in Newbold Verdon,
Separate from Kirby Muxloe
By a stretch of open country.
If you go past Newbold Verdon
You will meet a lot of nothing
Till you get to Market Bosworth, or
Maybe miles and miles of suburbs
Blessed with not a single chip shop.
“Open? Desford is between us.
If you’re looking for a chippy
You should go to Newbold, Desford
Barwell, Ibstock, Hinckley, Groby,”
Signed, your humble servant, Derek.
And the Kirby-Desford bus route
Also goes through Newtown Unthank.
Thought I ought to add that – Derek.
(WUR/LF/DC)
(Sadly Derek now has left us.)
More here, and links to the rest.
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