A Short Poem comic poem number 237 by Angela Lansbury

 A limerick has just five lines

But gives you lots and lots of rhymes

Japanese, haikus, like cups of tea

Reduce lines' size to only three.

A shorter poem's succinct and tough

One last couplet is quite enough.

-ends-

Angela Lansbury writing with outsize pencil. Selfie photo by Angela Lansbury. 

(How can I be sure it is a selfie if I did not save it with a caption saying so? Because it has the green background of my study and my red chair. The photographer would have to be sitting on my laptop on the desk in front of me. I have obviously taken it with my mobile propped up on the desk top.

Please share links to your favourite poems.

Comic Writer and Editor - comic poem number 199

 

There twice was a poor, rich comic writer

Who wrote to a poem book editor

She wrote, 'I write poems, as you can see

If you need some poems, why not call me!

'I can write an amusing limerick

I promise no four-letter words in it

And cautionary tales about naughty fools

Just the thing for teachers at failing schools

'I can write you a classical sonnet

With a caricature of a dinosaur on it ...'

I've been planning this poem for twenty years

I hope it'll move you to laughter - or tears

As soon as you can, relieve my distress

Please send an advance. I trust you'll say yes

If commissions for me aren't piled high on your plate

Just note down my details - if I must, I can wait.

"Thank you for reading so far, can't complain

Angela Lansbury's my memorable name,

I can write a poem about your name too

Whatever you need, prose or poem, I'll do."

"A poem, or novel, or begging letter

Is hard to start, you think you'll do better

You write and rewrite, and stay up half the night

 It still doesn't look right, when re-read in daylight.

 "The difficult part is not how to end it

The hardest part is the courage to send it.

Some poems are written to cause a commotion

But others are glimpses of hidden emotion.

Some poems aggressively rumble and shout

Some poems let author's wild anger break out

Others whisper a secret, share common distress

"Do you feel this, too?" The sweet reader nods, yes.

-ends

Copyright Angela Lansbury. Friday 21st July 2023 at 3.29 a.m. 

I changed fire anger to wild anger. Fire is stronger and more original. But wild is easier to read and perform.

Why not buy both! See Lulu.com and amazon.com /amazon.co.uk

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Humorous Poets, Songwriters and Singers (alphabetical list) + Ode to Invisible Poems (Comic Poem no 128)

A song is a poem set to music for a voice using tones and rhythm as well as pauses.

Ayres, Pam

'I'd have taken more care of me teeth'

Lansbury, Angela

Ode To Invisible Poems

Guess - what would your writer really like to be? 11

Known for last words, a famous comic poet 11

Alas, jokes aren't allowed engraved on gravestones 11

So nobody sad could read it nor know it 11

So I'll hurry to write couplets on cloud nine 11

And hope a hurricane will swiftly blow it 11

So it travels like ballons around the world 11

When workshy, look from your window and know it 11

I'd like to write it quickly, flowing and quick 11

So the dumbest can read it, when sick, or thick 11

Ideas to copy, images to pick 11

Let's kick phrases about, like a Lego brick 11

When you're blue, in the pink, look up to white clouds 11

Be inspired when you're thinking of busy me 11

The dreamer who wrote invisible poems 11

Sardonic, comic, bucolic poetry.11

(I wrote this on Wednesday 13th April, 2022.)

Carrol, Lewis

'Say what you mean and mean what you say.'

Holloway, Stanley, reciting Albert and the Lion

'What do you usually pay?'

Lear, Edward

• There was an Old Man with a beard,
  Who said, "It is just as I feared!—
  Two Owls and a Hen,
  Four Larks and a Wren,
  Have all built their nests in my beard!"
  • Book of Nonsense, Limerick 1 (1846).

Lehrer, Tom

'The Catholics hate the Protestants, and Protestants hate the catholics, and everybody hates the Jews'.

McGonagal, William 

The Tay Bridge disaster

Milligan, Spike 

Gravestone message: I told them I was ill. 

Responding to WW2 question from Harry Secombe, 'Have you seen a cannon?': 

Spike: 'What colour?'

Nash, Ogden

Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker.

Shel Silverstein 

(Wrote the song A Boy Named Sue)

Sherman, Allan 

(Hello, mother, hello father, here I am at Camp Granada)

Useful Websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Humorous_poets 

http://www.shelsilversteinpoems.net/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriott_Edgar

Stanley Holloway reciting Albert and the Lion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaw-savyK0s

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer

https://interestingliterature.com/2017/05/10-of-the-best-poems-about-insects/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogden_Nash

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Humorous_poets

What Makes A Poem Funny? + Laughing (Comic Poem No 127)

 

Poems are written in several funny styles.

Absurd

The subject can be funny.

 It might be an everyday object glorified in a poem. 

A villain treated as a hero. 

An absurd situation. 

A twist ending. 

An exaggeration.

Limericks

• There was an Old Man with a beard,
  Who said, "It is just as I feared!—
  Two Owls and a Hen,
  Four Larks and a Wren,
  Have all built their nests in my beard!"
  • Book of Nonsense, Limerick 1 (1846).

Puns

Misunderstanding

Exaggerated fear

Exaggerated reaction to fear

Conflict

One-upmanship of a lowly person

Exaggerated emotion: anger, fear, hope, love

Exaggerated behaviour

Mocking danger

Inappropriate song (Save the last dance for me on the Titanic)

-ends-

Photo Laughter by David Shankbone from wikipedia

Laughing (Comic Poem by Angela Lansbury)

Some people prefer one on one

If they like to tickle

You can race around an audience

But audiences are fickle

You can make them laugh

With just a wink

If they've all had

Too much to drink

I could make them laugh en masse

If I gave them laughing gas

Don't confuse them with long facts

Just make them laugh and they'll relax.

Soup Trick Limerick

There was a girl from Guadalupe
Who made the most delicious soup
She fed it to the local troops
So they were always cock-a-hoop
When they saw the girl from Guadalupe.

The proper way to write a hit limerick

Is to make the first line like the last

If you want to be read, repeated and heard

You need to observe how to order the words

The proper way to write a hit limerick.

You are never too tired, or busy, or sick
To spend a second on a limerick

It can hit heavy, wrong, long, like a dropped brick

Yet impress 'cause it's witty, often done slickly

Like life, love, and soup, short, over too quickly.

-ends-
Inspired by the word Guadalupe, a city in Mexico.
Angela Lansbury, copyright Wed Aug 28 2019.

Revised with two extra verses 27 November 2021

The word trick in the title is ambiguous. A trick is both a deceit and a clever, quick, successful action.