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

Lines on the Accession of Pope Benedict XVIth

The choice of each cardinal when-he-picked,
A name from the list of names then-he-ticked.
Each quickly agreed
That they'd vote at high speed,
Now Ratzinger's known as Pope Benedict.

Lines on an unrelated topic:

A lawyer once said, "My advice is
At all costs avoid all surprises.
Do just what you ought,
Or at least, don't get caught
By the Law in its various guises."

I heard that the will stipulated
That the gifts could not be debated
So grandma left me
He old lingeree
And other things that we hated

Grandma was more than generous
With the treasures that she left to us
Her girdles and socks
Hair curlers and smocks
And passed down from Grandpa, a truss

Grandma's passing was quite a shock
She left me the grandfather clock
In the clock, I did find
A key for to wind
And grandpa in a jar labled "rock"

So Grandpa surrendered his soul
When hearing for whom the bells toll.
By Grandma first throttled,
Then pickled and bottled -
A new spin on drugs, rock and roll.

I went to see Zen Master Ben
And spoke with Master Ben of Zen
Sipped some Chai Tea
Talked of Tai Che
And then, with Ben, of Zen, again

The Saga of Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Packard
or
How to make a mountain out of a molehill..........
(The molehill being Recumbentman's intial limerick on the HP theme, the mountain being the endless succession of verses added superfluously by Chaiwallah, wouldn't you know?)

[Apologies in advance to Mssrs H & P, the saga as told here in no way relates to any mundane reality, and should not be taken as anything other than a verse fantasy.]

Said Hewlett to Packard one day,
"I've thought of a scheme that should pay.
With a silicon splinter
We'll knock up a printer
That blows all the others away."

Said Hewlett, "I've just got to say
So far I've found no-one who'll play,
But if you lot will back it
We'll soon make a packet."
Said Packard, "I copy. Okay."

They set out their rivals to slay
And targeted Rank, Arthur, Jay.
Their battle was ferox
Against giant Xerox,
Whose head they served up on a tray.

Competitors in disarray,
HP can retire from the fray
To rest on their laurels -
No corporate squabbles,
No stress. Oh how happy are they!

Now both, though they're ageing and grey
Kept all of the bailiffs at bay.
Having made so much loot
(And the X-Files to boot)
They're loaded for keeps, come what may!

Enough of this, let's not delay
In putting these verses away.
It shows there's no lacker
Finance with a backer
Like Packard when Hewlett makes hay.

Don't worry, you don't have to pray,
This poem is finished, hooray.
The verses all serried
In lines are now buried -
Interred, as it were, in the clay.

There once was a fellow named Brett
Who went out with girls in his 'vet
He said with elation,
Meeting girls from the station,
"I love playing with the train set!"

A virgin young girl on a Horse
Said " I really don't need intercourse,
I can get my elation,
Without penetration,
It's down to the rhythm of course".


(Nice to see you Chiawallah and Recumbentman)

A beautiful day at the zoo
The ostrich is mounting a gnu
A robin and dove
Are falling in love
And the baboon's chasing a kangaroo

By posting that link* Triquack has
Put both Chai and me out to grass
As we try to define
In this format (five-line)
Words beginning with Aa- to Az-

* http://www.oedilf.com/db/Lim.php

Good luck to both of you two
I'm sure you'll know just what to do
Whiling away time
Defining in rhyme
In English, words both old and new

A flighty young floozy from Greece
Fell in love with the Chief of Police.
She left him because her
Athenian rozzer
Liked sex on four legs with a fleece.

Triquack, what have you done? By posting the OEDILF link, you've given me an addiction almost as bad as the late lamented Ballad of Grimley Moer.

Here's a sample of what I've been up to. The limerick dictioonary is slowly working through the 'A's.

Agamidae sit round on rocks
Unaware of time's ticks or its tocks.
I don't want to bore ya,
This species of Sauria
's a lizard that's hard to outfox

The most famous Amin is Idi,
Of whom you can only ask "Did he
Treat Uganda well
When he made it a hell?
Was he psycho, deluded, or giddy?"

A man without kids, an adopter,
Adopted a baby, but dropped her.
She squawled and she fretted,
His wife, quite upset, said,
"She's crawling now. You should have stopped her."

My colleagues consider me terse,
When I read and anatomise verse.
First I take it apart
From the end to the start
As I find less is more, more words worse.

I should have examined the print,
As the builders have now left me skint.
I thought I was caught
With the house I had bought
As the afterthoughts cost me a mint.

If acetoacetic's the acid
That's found in your blood, don't be placid.
Diabetes now lurks
In your nethermost works,
And what should be stiff will be flaccid.

And here are some more:


As Kaizer Bill surveyed the Somme,
He found he had lost his aplomb:
"That Anglo-French army
Is driving me barmy,
It's time that we dropped a big bomb."

When Edward, victorious at Crecy,
Decided that more might be less he
Said,"Let's make a meaty
Great Anglo-French Treaty
And stop all these wars, they're too messy."

And some more:

My new girlfriend has amulets plenty—
Against evil, say most cognoscenti.
The last time I counted
The number had mounted,
And now she wears upwards of twenty.

If you search through the drawers of a wizard
You'll find bat's ears, and crow's eyes and gizzard.
Maybe somewhere amid
All the rubbish is hid
The dried skin of an agamid lizard.

As hippies we ate what was hip.
"Psychedelical mushrooms? We'll flip!"
Agaricus, well known
For its visions, is grown
As a tool used by toads for a trip.
The Amazons (who would have guessed?)
As a habit burnt off the right breast,
Thus enhancing the flow
Of the arrow to bow,
Though it made for a lopsided chest.

How nasty was Queen Agrippina,
Few Romans were viler or meaner.
To Claudius she said,
"Deary me, how you bled...
Oh Nero, please call in a cleaner."

(Queen Agrippina murdered her husband, the Emperor Claudius, so that her son, Nero, would become emperor. Which he did, and promptly murdered her. Charming, eh?)

And e few more...

Most serious histories take
The view that, regarding burnt cake,
King Alfred the Great
Was in no fit state
To burn bridges or boats, nor to bake.

If you fall off your bike and you drag on knees
You're sure to experience agonies.
The pains are acute
If you land on your toot,
Unless you're as tough as mahagonies.

It's autumn and out in my field
The aftergrowth's ready to yield
A late crop of hay.
Give me one sunny day
And a really sharp hay-scythe to wield.

My girl admits she's an admitter.
The job's badly paid, so she's bitter.
She opens the door
On the lingerie floor,
Admits shoppers, and picks up their litter.

An admitter is one who admits,
Takes a stand. You could say that he sits
In a place where his word
Is the truth. Undeterred,
He'll admit his mistake, if it fits.

yet more....

One summer when plants were adorned
With the flowers that winter had scorned,
My girlfriend said, "Here
Is a rose for your ear."
"No thanks, it's too thorny," I yawned.
The Spartans, defeated, felt blue,
Sat wondering what they should do.
They thought, "That Achaean
King's methods were mean,
But he was a keen warrior too.

The victorious King of Achaia
Told his people, "It's perfectly clear
Those Spartans, defeated,
Don't need to be treated
As threats we Achaians should fear."

Said Cyrus, "Those damnable Greeks
Have been raiding our kingdom for weeks.
Achaemenid pride
Says we Persians must ride
Out and slay them till not a Greek speaks.

...overkill......


It's clear that the current world state of
Affairs needs a lead that's creative.
We lurch between crisis
And war: my advice is,
We must be more accommodative.

Financially, feeling a lack a
The readies, I needed a backer.
An expert I sought
Who'd sold and who'd bought—
A businessman, not just an acca.

My wife said accountability
Required my financial agility
To pay for our kids.
Now I'm down on the skids—
That's the price of those acts of fertility.

I'm rapidly nearing senility,
Thus losing all accountability.
To account for my time
My response is this rhyme,
Which just adds to my sense of futility.

..screaming point......

Ms.Jenkins' acclimatisation
Technique caused a seaside sensation.
To cope with the heat
She stripped to her feet,
Thus gaining mens' awed veneration

In my days of artistic creation
I used to use aftersensation.
The trick at the start
Was to make my Op Art
Leave a shape for identification.

An agogue, dear dictionary reader,
Is classed as a kind of a leader.
A prefix, like syn
Gives the class he is in,
Thus demagogue's sort of a pleader.

If you want your bread whiter than white
You must agenize flour overnight.
No pain is involved
But the colour's dissolved
By this chemical. Can it be right?

A mummy, asleep in Egypt
Awoke, found his wrappings had slipped.
The linen in hanks
Had unrolled, spilled his ankhs.
He said, "Ankhs give me angst in me crypt."

No wine left! Amidst the confusion
In Cana, Christ said, "The solution—
I think that I oughter
Make wine out of water.
The host says he's antidilution.

Do you find that your answering machine
Has two lights, one of red, one of green?
If you phone when I'm out
The red flashes about
Till I answer or wipe the tape clean.

The Romans all so loved to be at a
Show in a large amphitheatre.
The great Collosseum
Would hear the Te deum
When bears killed a Christian to eat her.