h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Several rhymes work with "Limerick"
Go to "Rhymer.com" and make a click
It'll show you cool rhymes
Hundreds of times
Just make sure that your scansion is rhythmic.

'Limerick' is a real challenge. I probably posted this one before, but this is my best shot:

There was a young fellow from Limerick
Who said to a cross-channel swimmer, "Ic'
Bin Irlander -- du?"
"Qu'est-ce tu dis? Tu es fou?"
Yes, his German appearance was chimeric.

Since there are some pros assembled, I'd love to know the actual limerick made up on the spot (so I hear) by James Joyce. I heard that when challenged by a disagreeable woman in his audience to come up with a rhyme using her name, 'Qumby'. Here's as best I can remember it:

How red is the hair on Miss Qumby
It's a great deal redder than some be
The hair on her head
Is so flamingly red
How red must the hair on her bum be?

She should have seen that coming - she was rather asking for it!

Oh sorry -

If your name rhymes with a word that is naughty
You shouldn't have airs and be haughty
Least of all to your betters
Or clever men of letters
Or you'll be in for a bashing - or forty!

As mentioned I live in Vancouver,
Which rhymes fairly well with a Hoover,
So women from here
Have much they should fear,
Included in poems that have veiled sexual innuendo.

Oh, no- I meant:

*I'll find one and then have to prove 'er*

Continuing the theme (well, sort of)...

A virgin named Geraldine Hick,
Would turn pale at the sight of a dick.
No amount of coersion
Would cure this aversion.
(Though she often enjoyed a good lick).

Never heard of that Joyce limerick, Pailaway, but it looks pretty credible to me!

It's important when listening to Joyce
Never to raise up your voice
For if you do
Then a limerick or two
Will be flung with some words that are choice

In the real world my surname is Beamish
Its usage on paper not ream-ish
Previously mentioned in rhyme
Just one single time
By C. Dodgson in a verse not for the squeamish

Well my name in R-L is Lawrence,
In lyric some may have writ torrents,
The desert one wrote,
One more in a boat,
And I come up short with no warrants.

(Dad in the RN, I can't get arrested)

Speaking of names, and while I try to come up with something on mine:

I've got a new neighbor named bartfarst
Who make a huge din when his car starts
Once the engine is hot
Then he's off like a shot
Passing police all sweaty and barge-arsed

"And this our life exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing."
--Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II Scene I

Whatever befalls will confim and
Support one whose mind is determined.
A pompous ass drones
About 'sermons in stones':
When I'm stoned, I feel stoned and not sermoned.

My mind is a festering midden
Where limericks bubble unbidden.
I put them about
When they force their way out
Though a few of them still remain hidden.

My mind is slumbering swamp
Lethargic, humid, and damp.
Such thoughts as arise
I usually despise
My brain is held in a clamp.

The mind of most men is a sewer
Where good stuff is mixed with manure.
The product ejected
Is not unexpected:
Deep brown, with some bits that are bluer.

Is smut purely written by men ?
Do girls not indulge now and then ?
Do they not write on walls
In toilets and halls
Not even Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen ?

For a massage, a taste of delight,
Call, a 1, then 4 sevens - 28.
I'll be at your command
What'ere you demand.
(As long as it don't involve sh*te.)

Good limericks all come from the gutter
And whether you're sane or a nutter
It's all the same sh*te
That we'll sit down to write
As the monkeys will throw at each other

But I compose amongst dreaming spires
Suppressing the basest of desires
From my verse I eschew
anything thats blue
Except ladies with buttocks like jelly filled tyres.

The mental material swirls
As we fashion our fanciful pearls.
There pours from our ivory
Towers salivary
Slop about fat-bottomed girls.