In the spirit of Art’s Birthday, which today is, namely participatory and cooperative creation of art, it is a great pleasure to announce this year’s Metamorphosism International Valentine’s Day Limerick Contest.
Over the years, hundreds of brilliant limericks have seen the light of day thanks to this contest, and we are looking forward to seeing a lot this year. As always, there are rules which, as always, are subject to arbitrary change at my whim, at short notice and unannounced. The decisions of the judge will be final. There will be at least two prizes this year, maybe more. Contact me if you have a prize you’d like to donate. My email is metamorphosist@gmail.com. Two prizes have already been donated, one by Bran, her book The Slow-Moving Person’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse: A How-to for the Survival of the Unfit, and the other by me (with fine-art illustrations by Bran), namely a remaining copy of my book Little-Known Facts about Various Marine-Dwelling Animals (if I can find it in my messy studio).
The rules: (NOTE UNFAIR AND ARBITRARY RULE CHANGES MADE ON 7 FEBRUARY 2012 SUPERCEDING PREVIOUS RULE CHANGES)
- Entries must be genuine limericks. Look up what a limerick is before entering if you don’t know.
- Make entries as comments to this post.
- Include a valid email address so I can contact you if necessary. Emails are not published.
- Limericks are famous for being raunchy, so this contest is open only to people old enough to be writing raunchy limericks, even if the actual limericks you enter are not raunchy, because there is a chance you will at least be reading raunchy limericks.
- These are limericks, and the contest is for Valentine’s Day, so thematically they should include something related to love and/or sex, requited or not. Obsession, attraction, etc. are also okay.
- Deadline is February 13, 2012, because the winners will be announced with much fanfare on February 14, 2012. It is the last Valentine’s Day in the history of mankind, if the Mayans are right, so make your entries count.
- I would like to publish a volume of the best entries from past years, so by entering you are giving me permission to (possibly) publish your entry in such a volume, without remuneration (any profits will be donated to charity). Otherwise all rights remain with authors.
- Extra points: (Be sure and read this rule; it is practically impossible to win without extra credit) Extra credit is awarded this year for references to / incorporation of the following: MARITIME DISASTERS, STRIPPERS, POLITICAL SCANDALS, AND SPERM DONATION
H.P. Lovecraft, Australian place names (especially Wollongong and Tweed Heads), esoteric philosophy, and wrestling holds. New entries following the previous, superceded rules will be DISQUALIFIED. literary parody (especially Cormac McCarthy), obscure sciences, consequences of environmental pollution, various chimera by name, Japanese Noh theater actors, anthropological concepts, functional recipes, and types of knots. And the apocalypse. - You may enter as often as you like. Multiple entries are encouraged, and improve your chances of winning.
- You are encouraged to spread the word about this contest.
- Have a nice day.
- PS on your way out, why not go watch my videos on youtube? (IMPORTANT: According to my youtube stats, many of you have not been following this rule!)
- Or go take a look at the 2009 contest, which was a very good year for poetry.
(Many thanks to bran for this year’s logo!)
Back to love and sex and no Iceland this year?! Oh, dear. But just to start things off:
A chimera, if ever I’ve seen one,
Tis her eyes: she’s one blue and one green one,
In bed she’s depraved,
Or demurely behaved,
She’s two lovers: one nice, and one mean one.
Jay!
The cryptozoologist pondered
What on earth is it good for, he wondered,
to tie a goat – for God’s sake –
to a lion and a snake
The benefits all will be squandered
’cause of recent nuclear radiation
Many Nôh actors underwent mutation
“Three little girls from school” they sing
and “Nine million bicycles in Beijing”
to many an audience’s frustration
Penelope Violet Dupree
Is surely the sweetheart for me
Though there may be some trouble
When my folks clock her stubble
And fondness fo bourbon whiskey.
A knot is a knot is a knot
Lest it’s loose, because then it is not
It’s a piece of chrochet
made from circle, they say
and Euclidean space is its plot.
It’s outrageous, this corporate doing,
The newlyweds just might be suing,
With smog levels exceeding,
Safe levels, they’re needing,
Their asthma inhalers while screwing!
In Endicott, yes, and nearby,
TCE’s from the tap, oh, my, my,
When your heart goes flip-flop,
And seems like it will stop,
It’s not love; it’s the water supply!
TCE, or trichloroethylene, is an industrial solvent contaminating water supplies and known to cause heart rhythm disorders.
Mig, it should’ve been “Three little maids from school” instead of girls. That’s what happens when Wikipedia goes offline for a day.
If SOPA passes, the limerick contest will be impossible.
With a sailor I was so bewitched
That something inside of me twitched
But the ring he forgot
When tying the knot
And now we are only half-hitched.
After Cormac McCarthy
lucille, you old pa done gone wild
when he heard you is carryin’ my child
but I told him afore
we already got four
so I don’t know why he gets so riled
A phrenologist that was named Earl
had a crush on a skull of a girl
How developped! He said
Even though you are dead
Oh, my heart beats and my head does twirl!
The atmosphere was solipsistic
And the audience apocaplectic
to think that man’s evolution
would be barred through pollution
by “Simple Truth” dvd’s plastic
The knots in Joe’s stomach were taut,
They felt like clove hitches, he thought,
A date, he had made,
With a lady most staid,
Twas this virtue’s reversal he sought.
The Japanese Noh: long and boring,
With the audience waaay close to snoring,
Jim and Julie ducked down,
Twixt the seats, on the ground,
Of their love, there ensued an outpouring.
The lovers were keen on adventures,
(They just had to take care for their dentures),
Gerocomy, they read about,
Elder sex, much was said about,
And their lewd, public acts brought them censures.
A chimera’s what one could assume,
She’d consumed her own twin in the womb,
The behavior persisted,
Though lovers resisted,
Their bones stacked up in the back room.
I rebelled against faith and The Bible,
Armageddon, and Baptist revival.
Now the Mayans insist,
Without evangelists,
2012 will see no more survival.
Apiologist Kerr was obsessed
With the African bee, quite complex.
But leave it to Taber,
(And his tiny bee “saber,”)
To knock-up the queen without sex.
Help! I’ve been stricken with chronic italics! Curse you HTML.
Dearest Nancy, my love, wrote the sailor
who was fishing for whales of a whaler
I’ll come visit you soon
And I’ll bring my harpoon
Alas he just didn’t know how to mail her.
Help! now I’m stricken too!
Entries stricken by italics will be disqualified.
Including my last comment.
There, fixed it. Those of you using html tags in your entries are encouraged to close them properly.
[Whilst on the subject]
When one’s stricken with chronic italics
it is time to call in the mechanics
all hail HTML
makes my limericks look swell
So no reason for alchemy, astrology or dianetics
Thanks for fixing my leaning text. I will not mess with such dangerous effects again!
At Kyoto’s Noh theater one night
My missus and I had a fight
I said that the waki
Looked, in fact, Iraqi
And she said “I think that he’s shite.”
The hole in ozone of course is
Depleted by CFC sources
Though none seem aghast
It’s sufficiently vast
For four men to ride through on horses
lol @ #29, Schnitzi
& #11, Sandra – dead ringer for Cormac.
smog colored snowfall
love and apocalypse poems
i laugh over tea
Numerologists tell me it’s near
That we won’t last much more than this year
I don’t care where I go
But this much I know
Armageddon the fuck out of here
Of those who toward Mayan views lean,
I’ve heard there are some who are keen,
On a huge shopping spree,
And then giggling with glee,
No payments till two-o-thirteen!
My wife sidled up just to say,
“Do you know it’s St. Valentine’s Day?
That’s a date we should keep.
(If you weren’t so dang cheap,
We’d at least dine the Hog Trough Buffet).”
Outdoor wedding plans? All torn asunder,
When the rain poured amidst clapping thunder.
The wet bride looked bizarre,
Now twice soaked at the bar.
The groom fumed at the weatherman’s blunder.
There once was a lady named Lynn
Who endeavored to live without sin.
But her neighbor got amorous
And it felt pretty glamorous,
So she thought she would try it again (… and again … and again …).
There’s an elderly fellow named Joe
Whose organ gives nothing but woe.
He takes pills for E.D.
And needs Flomax to pee
Since he simply can’t come and can’t go.
E.D. is an abbreviation for erectile dysfunction. Flomax™ is a drug which helps men urinate by reducing enlargement of the prostate.
The outcome was wholly unplanned.
Nine months after his hot one-night stand,
He was at the marina
When he got the subpoena
And paternity test court command.
A sinner knelt down for confession
That turned into an extra long session.
The detailed love feast
That was told to the priest
Won a trophy for sexual transgression.
There once was a fellow named Lloyd
Whose adenoids really annoyed.
It caused him to snore,
And the chicks to abhor
The bedroom they once had enjoyed.
I’ve a sports car, a brand new Corvette,
And it’s driven me deep into debt.
But if a hot chick’ll
Jump in for a tickle,
Oh man, I will have no regret.
There once was a lady named Nell
Who thought sex would condemn her to hell,
Till the preacher at church
Called it “Christian research.”
(As researcher, she did rather well.)
The critics all loathed DH Lawrence
The public screamed out their abhorrence
The courts said “it’s filth!”
To the gamekeeper’s MILF
As they spurted out censure in torrents
Sticking needles in people is fun
But you need to know how it is done
Acupuncturists agree
the arrival of Qi
is just like nailing the pin for the pun
It boggles my cerebral cortex
That they’re still making things out of Gortex
The way that it’s made
It won’t ever degrade
And ends up in the Pacific Trash Vortex.
“Pollution”, and “Noh”, one might need,
And I’ve seen some good lim’ricks indeed,
But the brain can get addled,
When it is saddled,
With having *romance* take the lead!
Sue and Johnny were eager to screw,
In the once scenic lake, but who knew?
Twas a poisonous stew,
That’s what fracking will do,
The searchers found only a shoe.
•fracking is hydraulic fracturing, a mining technique which is poisoning our water and (some think) causing earthquakes, and ruining the beauty of the land.
Biorythmic arrhytmia I adore
I got rhytm and music for four
Fell in love with her gaze
My sine waves ‘re out of phase
Who could ask for anything more?
A young eschatologist said
In a voice that was dripping with dread
“If Heisenberg’s right
Then empiricism’s shite
And we might as well all go to bed.”
Miyoshi, a lover of Noh,
Was obsessed with Shinsaku Hōshō,
She’d heard he was serious,
It made her delirious,
Only problem: he died long ago!
Pollution has vast consequen΄ces,
Its effects can defy any fences,
Can be global or focal,
Or just one local yokel,
But the danger to our species immense is.