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Posts: 833
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OP
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Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 833 |
I like to keep a kind of "commonplace book" - only instead of writing the things I discover in a book with blank pages (which I used to do), I now copy items into a file in my compuker called "Quotable Quotes." I recently rediscovered this excellent pome, in a pile of pieces of paper destined to be so transcribed. Figgered fellow wordies might enjoy it....I found it posted on the Lonely Planet's discussion board, the Thorn Tree, by someone called "lady fuschia" - in response to a discussion about worst-latrine experiences while travelling - 'tis very clever, methinks:
a pal o’ mine, who is not me,
has spectacles required to see.
while at a bus-trip toilet stop
in india, he sadly dropped
them down the pit. it was not clean
(not flushable, see what i mean?)
but he’d no choice - he had to sink
his arm in that atrocious stink
to find the glasses. what a drama!
and what a diahorreahrama!
he searched till he was shoulder-deep
then - praise the lord!, hear jesus weep! -
his fingers wrapped around the glasses
soaked in soil from others’ asses.
he pulled them out, but - oh to think! -
there was no water in the sink,
the bus was leaving, what to do?
both arm and glasses caked in poo!
so, thus encrusted, he returned
and took his seat, and thus was spurned
by fellow travellers, faeces-leary:
his view that day was somewhat smeary.
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Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
Methinks Pome stinks! 
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439 |
Oh! Great! Now every time I see someone wearing those chains that hold glasses on I will think of that poor man! Yeaccchhhh!
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Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 725
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Posts: 725 |
I searched in Wordplay and Fun and don't see that much has ever been discussed about the poems of Ogden Nash. He is a particular favorite of mine.
Here's my all-time fave:
Sure, deck your lower limbs in pants,
Yours are the limbs, my sweeting.
You look divine as you advance --
Have you seen yourself retreating?
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Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 833
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OP
old hand
Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 833 |
Have you seen yourself retreating?hee hee! But t'ain't necessarily so....I used to work at a historic site here in Kingston (Fort Henry, for any as may have visited) and the gift shop girls (of which I was one) were required to wear kilts (and nylons, even on steenkin' hot days - it was a bit of a bitch). We had a change room and on a cooler day towards the end of one summer I was wearing jeans and had changed into them to go home. I was walking out of the fort with a male colleague (the only male working in the gift shops - in the military store), and we passed some soldiers doin' their drill thang. My colleague told me I should wiggle my arse at them; I said, "Why? I'm not wearing my kilt...." He said, "Exactly!" Trousies certainly do add, ahem, definition....
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
CB, one of the sites in the link Dr. Bill posted features Nash poems (thanks for posting that piece, by the way--Sweeting has a special meaning for me). I'll post the link here as well--look for Candy is Dandy. http://www.wolinskyweb.net/word.htm
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Posts: 725
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Thanks, Jackie!
Here's one I don't remember ever reading, which I found on that website.
Pretty Halcyon Days
by Ogden Nash
How pleasant to sit on the beach,
On the beach, on the sand, in the sun,
With ocean galore within reach,
And nothing at all to be done!
No letters to answer,
No bills to be burned,
No work to be shirked,
No cash to be earned,
It is pleasant to sit on the beach
With nothing at all to be done!
How pleasant to look at the ocean,
Democratic and damp; indiscriminate;
It fills me with noble emotion
To think I am able to swim in it.
To lave in the wave,
Majestic and chilly,
Tomorrow I crave;
But today it is silly.
It is pleasant to look at the ocean;
Tomorrow, perhaps, I shall swim in it.
How pleasant to gaze at the sailors.
As their sailboats they manfully sail
With the vigor of vikings and whalers
In the days of the vikings and whale.
They sport on the brink
Of the shad and the shark;
If its windy they sink;
If it isn't, they park.
It is pleasant to gaze at the sailors,
To gaze without having to sail.
How pleasant the salt anesthetic
Of the air and the sand and the sun;
Leave the earth to the strong and athletic,
And the sea to adventure upon.
But the sun and the sand
No contractor can copy;
We lie in the land
Of the lotus and poppy;
We vegetate, calm and aesthetic,
On the beach, on the sand, in the sun.
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Posts: 725
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Posts: 725 |
The Wasp
by Ogden Nash
The wasp and all his numerous family
I look upon as a major calamity.
He throws open his nest with prodigality,
But I distrust his waspitality.
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Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 104
member
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Posts: 104 |
Well, I can definitely say this bespectacled lady would prefer to be blind than to do that! I would even prefer to spend another $300 on my very expensive graduated bifocal spectacles!
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Posts: 1,526
veteran
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veteran
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Posts: 1,526 |
"Faeces-leary." I love it. There are a number of poems I know that are bit bawdy. I think I read one by Auden once about "taking a dump" or something like that. (It was pretty good, I thought, but it just didn't stick with me.) One of my favorites is not about feces, but is still a bawdy bit. http://users.crocker.com/~lwm/theboys.htmlDon't recall if I've posted that pointer before, but it's pretty good. Another ribald one - and I don't remember where I read this or who wrote it - is "A woman is a book, and often found, to prove far better in the sheets than bound. No wonder, then, some students take delight, above all things to study in the night." There's a neat one by cummings I read years ago that starts out "may I feel said he I'll squeal said she just once said he its fun said she" and so on. The "have you seen yourself retreating" line reminds me of another one whose author I don't recall. "Husbands would not go a-whoring, they'd stay with the wives they adore, if wives were but half as alluring, after the act as before." k
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