For a couple of hours a day,
with my doggy leading the way,
I poetize
under my doggy's watchful eyes,
and record everything we have to say
This site contains more than 850 limericks and such, (limericks, pseudo limericks, and non-limericks) that I composed over the last two years while walking my three-year old dog.
I’m retired and live in a small mobile home. And to keep the dog from going nuts in this small place, I take him for long walks three times a day. But these walks soon began to drive me nuts, because it’s pretty damn boring having to watch him sniff ─ or piss on ─ every urine-scented tree, plant, shrub, blade of grass, fire hydrant, telephone pole, fence post, every tossed-out alcohol container, every bit of fast-food trash, every other-dog turd, and so on that we pass along the way.
One day, out of the blue, I started to recite some remembered limericks and short verses while we were walking along. And it made the walk so much more enjoyable that I decided that I’d I try to come up with silly little verses of my own. And that’s what I’ve been doing the last two years or so. And in hope that you might like to read some silly-to-serious little verses, too, I’ve decided to share them here with you.
Some of the verses you’ll find here are true limericks, but most are not. Some are longer than five lines, but most or not. Some are humorous, or silly, or cute, or absurd, or nonsensical, and some are not. Some are clearly “postmodern” parody, or satire, or sarcasm, or spoof; and some clearly are not. Some are sad, or depressing, or downbeat, or thought provoking, and some are not. And some are just for kids (or childish), and some just for adults (or even more childish), but most are not.
To make sense of some of these verses, some readers may require a little background knowledge (Bible, literature, mid-Twenties Century popular culture, etc.), which I try to provide through links they can follow. I hope you can find something here that you like ─ if not, oh well ─ I tried.
If you prefer to see all these verses together in one file, you can download this PDF. If you have comments or questions about anything related to this site, please contact Rio Jansen. You can do so at rio_jansen@hotmail.com.
Note: This page contains verses 1-50. To jump to verses 51-850, see Links to other dog walking limericks and such pages.
Limericks and such – verses 1-50
1. Each day, when I take my dog out to go do his potty shtick
I try to mentally compose at least one brand-new limerick.
Now you may think, "Wow, that's pretty neat.
But how do you manage to pull off such a grandiose poetic feat?"
It's simple! I'm what in Dutch is called a real slimmerik.*
* smart person or, alternatively, a smart ass
2. Here, I throw all my limericks against the wall
in hope one will stick, while others may fall.
You'd figure at least one has the originality
to escape the charge of being pure banality.
But of that, I'm not too certain at all.
3. Since I'm retired and have practically nothing to do,
I decided to write a whole bunch of verses for you,
so that when I come to die,
you can't say, "My, oh my!
Wish he woulda told us a thing or two."
4. A limerick/poem doesn't have to be ...
a. A limerick doesn't have to be funny.
It can also be about the stress of having little or no money;
or about the state of affairs
in a world where no one cares
if your day turns out be totally gray or partially sunny.
b. A poem doesn't have to be necessarily true.
A poem doesn't have to articulate anything particularly new.
A poem need only express
what a Goddess might freely confess,
if you could get her to talk to you.
c. A poem doesn't have to be deep ─
it just has to be careful not put the reader to sleep,
and to make sure that she'll read till the end,
by making her feel like she's being talk to by a friend
who has secrets to share or secrets to keep.
5. I love flash fiction —
the carefulness of its diction —
the weighing of every thought
whittled down to the precision sought —
a minimum of words for a maxim depiction.
6. I write most of my limericks in a fraction of an hour.
That's faster than it takes me to take my daily shower.
And sure, I may not have every syllable in place,
and the rhymes may be too slant or too commonplace.
But is that enough reason to pooh-pooh my poetic power?
7. Some of my verses are from the viewpoint of cis males
In that respect, they can be called "real dude" tales.
If you are of a different gender,
it may take a bit of a mindbender
to appreciate some of these verses in all their details.
8. Sometimes it all turns on the absurd.
Like that pink elephant there on the back of that green bird.
It's like a scene painted by Marc Chagall
who, as we know, was the grandmaster of all
who pictured things that never actually occurred.
9. Since you're bound to find out sooner or later,
let me tell you right off ─ I'm an unreliable poetic narrator.
I am the one voice that pervades all this verse,
and you can expect me to lie, to tattle, to con, and to curse,
or commit other poetic mischief one might consider even greater ─ or even worse.
10. This is my missive to a world
that never heard of me, ─
the sum of all my words
shared in slick simplicity.
My thoughts are now committed
to folks I cannot see.
And though flawed, for the love of God ─ sweet folks
judge tenderly of me!
* Play on Emily Dickinson’s poem “This is my letter to the world.”
11. I told her coitus interruptus
only works when the pulling out precise and abrupt is,
cuz if it is a millisecond too late,
it might be child number eight,
and that would surely bankrupt us.
12. It's always fun to reflect
on where we first hugged, and where we first necked,
and when it was that we first crossed the line
with you showing me yours and me showing you mine.
I don't remember ─ were we still eight? ─ or already nine?
13. I wanna go back to Michigan
so I can catch some really good fish again.
The fish from any other U.S lake
tend to give me such a bellyache,
that I can't wait to have a Michigan fish on my dish again.
14. When after years, you again sat on my face,
I hardly recognized the place.
It was not at all what I expected,
and so different from what I recollected,
with that new user interface in place.
15. My dog always barks at men who look suspicious,
and at strange cats nosing around his food or water dishes.
But he never barks at me,
and always looks with such glee
at the neighborhood women, whom he finds delectably delicious.
16. There's a woman walking around with my penis.
She has no idea what the definition of "mean" is.
When she crawled outta my sack,
she just grabbed it and wouldn't give it back,
saying, "Hey boy! It's probably best if we keep this between us.”
17. A third of the ducklings is three
waddling behind Mama Sherie.
If a duck is a bird,
and three is a third,
how many birds do you see?
18. My dog can be a real bad boy
and do things that just totally annoy.
Like he really made me mad
that day he pissed on my new iPad
and used my Apple Watch as a chew toy!
19. Irregardless was never a word,
regardless of what you might've heard.
And "between you and I"
will also not fly
if you wanna graduate from second year college to third.
20. I'm intrigued by the neighborhood tranny.
Unlike some other folks, I don't find her at all uncanny.
And I think she's every bit as cute
as all our other neighbors of ill repute,
but with a much nicer fanny.
21. She asked, "What does your painting mean?"
I said, "Nothing really. It's just a portrait of a peaceful evening scene."
She said, "But I sense something ominously stark,
there, lurking behind those two figures in the dark."
I said, "Oh, yeah. I see exactly what you mean.”
22. There once was a woman from Wales,
who had absolutely no use for males.
She liked women much better,
because they would never upset her
with their masculine-conquest tales.
23. If you spot a v of geese heading south,
you might consider closing your mouth.
Otherwise, they might just fly in,
unless, of course, they crash on your chin,
and make a mess on the front of your blouse.
24. Remember that first evening, when
we sank imperceptibly into Zen,
and as a full moon arose,
we slipped slowly out of our clothes,
and then?
25. Piggies Pinky, Poinky, and Puck
were sloshing in the summery murky muck.
It was the day before slaughter,
and they were enjoying the warm water,
and the chorus of the cackly goose and the quaky duck.
26. I met her at the Maine Wienerfest.
I thought her doggy was cuter than all the rest.
But she said she had her eye
on my handsome little guy.
In fact, she said she liked my little wiener the best.
27. "I know nobody, how about you?
Do you know nobody too?"
And then suddenly our world was so much better,
because nobody had brought us together,
and who woulda thought that that was something that nobody could do?
* Play on Emily Dickinson’s poem “I'm nobody, who are you” and e. e. cummings’s poem “anyone lived in a pretty how town.”
28. I once heard a myth about an uncle in Greece,
whose weenie size would daily increase,
so that after a while, when it unfurled,
it would go all the way round the world,
and end up in the lap of his niece.
29. Be alert!
Here live dangerous dragons that squirt
all manner of green ire
and orange hell fire
and if you get hit, you’ll get hurt!
30. When at sixty, I looked in the mirror and caught sight of my ass
I saw that it still had a little pizzazz.
But now that I'm seventy-five,
I can see the jiggle's no longer alive.
I guess my ass just finally ran out of gas.
31. It's hard to tell from this beautiful day
that a gigantic storm is on the way
that threatens to blow down your house
and get rid of that mouse
that you just couldn't catch yesterday.
32. Over the years, my eyes have deteriorated plenty.
It’s been a long time since they were twenty-twenty.
Tonight, when my wife took off her bra,
instead of two boobies, what I actually saw
was two boobies too many.
33. When I lost my heart in San Francisco,
I was told to go to the Lost and Found at First and Briscoe.
But to my chagrin, they had more than one lost heart,
and no matter how closely I examined 'em, I couldn't tell 'em apart.
So what could I do but just go eeny, meeny, miny, moe, Bro?
34. Whenever I feel sick, the best ointment
is to go ahead and make a doctor's appointment.
Because from that moment on,
all the symptoms will be gone,
which, for a hypochondriac, is a real disappointment.
35. She had the ass of the ages,
two hemispheres where the thunder rages.
And unless you crept inside,
there was no place to hide.
Read all about it in the Middle Age poetry pages.
36. Oh that I might
fly like a kite
in a sky with clouds a swirling.
It would be a great joy
for any young boy,
specially if he had thunderbolts he could be hurling.
37. There once was a man from Szechwan
whose penis looked like a pecan.
He met Bertha Butts
who was hungry for nuts.
So he gave her his pecan to chew on.
38. A friend I'd never seen naked before,
shed all of her clothes and asked, "How do you like the decor?"
I said, "I do like the hills,
and your Grand Canyon instills
a euphoria I haven't felt since of yore.
39. When you blew me that kiss
I knew right away it would miss.
But a little girl picked it up
as it landed in a buttercup
and said, "I think you were meant to be the recipient of this."
40. This is not why we did love you,
and learned to think the whole world of you,
just so you could sneak out the back door,
never to be seen anymore
except in visions with a coyote looking down from above you.
41. When I read your resume
I didn't know what to say.
You'd listed your mother
as your significant other
and requested ever day off
in lieu of benefits and pay.
42. Life in this big old fishbowl
was never quite completely whole,
till Wally the walrus
came to dwell among us,
and gave this fishbowl some soul.
43. That of your sweet love
I could never quite get enough ─
not from below ─ not from above ─
that’s sort a kind of
what I was sitting here thinking of.
44. The women who live in my village
don't like domestic work or tillage.
They get much more excited
when they get invited
with the guys to go plunder and pillage.
45. How many paradigms and how many paradoxes
can you stuff in a pair of pint-sized precious boxes?
And the answer is not,
"Oh teacher, I forgot,"
because I taught you to reason like wily little foxes.
46. When, as an angry teen, Van Gogh would walk aimlessly in the pouring rain,
what was going on inside that teeming, torturous brain?
Did he blaspheme heaven with every profanity and curse?
Or did he gaze in wonder at the stars of his exploding universe,
and try to make of their blue and yellow light a poultice for his pain?
47. I don't believe what just occurred!
The word I needed was gobbled up by that bird.
Oh, how could things have gone from bad to worse!
I now have this gaping hole in the middle of my verse.
And what I meant to say will be forever blurred.
48. No, I don't know what I meant
when I said that the universe was rent.
I think I was thinking
that the stars just keep on blinking
even when you don't pay ‘em a cent.
49. Hey my old pal, Don!
Fancy meeting you here at the eschaton.
I was always so lousy at biblical exegesis.
I used to hate that shit to pieces.
So, can you please clue me in as to what’s going on?
50. A dollop of tenderness with a dollop of love,
a dollop of hope from the heavens above,
a dollop of kindness with a dollop of care,
and a dollop of friendship with the promise to share
each of these dollops with everyone ─ everywhere.
Jump to other verse pages:
Verses 51-100 Verses 101-150 Verses 151-200
Verses 201-250 Verses 251-300 Verses 301-350
Verses 351-400 Verses 401-450 Verses 451-500
Verses 501-550 Verses 551-600 Verses 601-650
Verses 651-700 Verses 701-750 Verses 751-800
Verses 801-850 Verses 851-900
Comments, suggestions, or questions? Please email Rio Jansen at rio_jansen@hotmail.com