Why do they do it? The poets.
Write nonsense and claim it is genius. The rest of the world goes the other way: Meet up with genius and call it nonsense.
Me, I've always been enamored of the absurd, the nonsensical, the silly. It's likely why I enjoy Dr Seuss so much. And Lewis Carroll. And I figure it this way: Anyone who can't laugh at himself has no right to laugh at anyone else. That's why I take my daily look in the mirror.
Image from Pixabay.
The following limerick isn't something I wrote today. I wrote it a few months ago and felt ingratiated when my wife stumbled upon it and cackled. She doesn't like laughing at my jokes. Most of the time she groans. But I know she's laughing deep inside.
Way deep inside.
I know a laugh is sincere when it springs up spontaneously and against one's will. That night, my wife's chuckle was certainly of that nature. It took her by surprise, and I was surprised too because I hadn't intended upon her discovering this five-lined bit of silliness. I just wrote it during a marvelous bout of boredom that lasted all of five minutes. Then I ran to the shower because it felt so dirty.
And that's the defining characteristic of a limerick, isn't it? It makes us laugh when we know we should be washing our mouths out with soap. Good thing laughter tastes better.
The limerick is an age-old form). A couple hundred years, to be exact. Give or take. And it's closely related to its distant cousin, Nonsense. But nonsense is best when it's literary. At least, I think so.
I was not intending to publish this. But for some reason, I put it into a Notepad, a text document. And I saved it to my desktop, my portable office. Every now and then, I pull it up and look at it. Not because I want to, but because it's pasted at the bottom of my daily to-do list, a running document that I update each night before going to bed so I can remember what I'm supposed to be doing for the rest of the day when I get up the morn. I spend a few bad minutes each of those days gawking at a limerick. Can you believe that?
Well, I'd like to say it's a work of genius, but I know it's not. It's just a few silly old lines. And, say what you will, if it makes you laugh, just take a shower and hum the theme song from Frasier. You'll feel much better. I know I do.
The Limerick of Locket
There once was a man named Locket
who walked around with hands in his pocket.
None of them his,
he went for a whiz;
and when he did he sprung a sprocket.
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