For a couple of hours a day,
with my doggy leading the way,
I poetize
under my doggy's watchful eyes,
recording everything he or I may have to say
This site contains more than 600 limericks and such, (limericks, pseudo limericks, and non-limericks) that I composed over the last few 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 short verses of my own. And in hope that you might like to read some of these very silly to somewhat serious short verses, I’ve decided to share them here with you.
Some of the verses 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 51-600, see Links to other dog walking limericks and such pages.
Limericks and such – verses 1-50
Prologue
Since I’m retired and have practically nothing to do,
I thought I’d write some serious-to-silly short verses for you,
so that when the day comes when it's my time to die,
you won’t have to ask yourself, "Why, oh why, oh why
didn’t thiswiseguywise guy take the time ─ to tell us a thing or two?"
So here we go.
1. My dog always barks at men who look suspicious,
and at strange cats nosing around his food and water dishes.
But he never bark at me,
and he always looks with such glee
at the neighborhood women, whom he finds downright delicious.
2. How many paradigms and how many paradoxes
can a pirate stuff into a pair of pint-sized treasure boxes?
And the answer is not,
"Oh teacher, I forgot,"
because I taught you to reason like wily little foxes.
3. Sometimes a poem turns on the absurd,
like that one there, with that pink elephant,
flying on the back of that lime-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.
4. She said, "Coitus interruptus
only works when the pulling out precise and abrupt is,
cuz if you're a millisecond too late
it might be child number eight,
and that would surely bankrupt us."
5. It's always fun to reflect
on where we first hugged, and where we first necked,
and when it first was that we crossed the line
with you showing me yours and me showing you mine.
I don't remember ─ were we still eight? ─ or already nine?
6. I wanna go back to Michigan
and 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.
7. Said a handsome New Orleans waiter,
"Sir, can I recommend some freshly caught gator?"
Snarled I, "Are you for real?
Didn’t you hear about that woman Lucille?"
"And what if I can assure you this ain't the gator that ate her?""
8. When after some 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.
9. 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?
10. 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!
11. "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.
12. 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.”
13. Each of us oldies is destined to play a desperate part ─
as each of us ages into a gray-haired, senile, old fart,
with all of our juices flowing,
and sometimes not even knowing
when we’re busily creating pieces of fluid abstract art.
14. I met a man who was mining
clouds for their silver lining.
And for just a smile, you could buy
an endless supply of good cheer from this guy
to keep your sun perpetually shining.
15. Remember that first evening, when
we I sank imperceptibly into Zen,
and as a full moon arose,
we slipped slowly out of our clothes,
and then?
16. In about a week, I'm gonna go see my maker,
an old Italian guy, who left me with my present caretaker.
I need to see him about my nose,
because the damn thing just perpetually grows.
My caretaker says it's because I lie ─ but I don't know how seriously to take her.
17. 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 liked my little wiener the best.
18. "I know nobody, how about you?"
"OMG, yes! ─ I know nobody too!"
And then suddenly our world became 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.”
19. There once met a girl with a mohawk,
who was the queen of small-town slow talk.
To each passerby,
who gave her the eye,
she'd say, "Wwwhhhaaattt iiisss
yyyooouuurrr fffuuuccckkkiiinnnggg
ppprrrooobbbllleeemmm?
20. Be alert!
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!
21. When I saw Dilly dally,
I thought, "Oh no, this kid's got to rally!
Cuz if he loses this race,
it'll be a total disgrace,
cuz this race was right up his alley.
22. It's hard to tell from this beautiful day
but a gigantic storm is headed this way
that threatens to blow down your house
and get rid of that mouse
that you just couldn't catch yesterday.
23. 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.
24. 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?
* Play on song titled, "I left my heart in San Francisco."
25. When you jumped into my mind,
I touched your shoulder from behind.
But when you turned around to see,
I don't think you recognized me.
So, I just said, "Sorry, never mind."
26. What Einstein saw in his brain
would've driven a normal person insane.
He saw God with a golden beard,
yelling, "I already told you,eequalsmcsquared!
Albert! How many times do I have to explain!"
27. Oh, that I might
fly like a kite
in a sky with clouds a' swirling.
It would be such a great joy
for any young boy,
especially if he had thunderbolts he could be hurling.
28. 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.
29. When I first heard of your demise,
I was at McDonald's eating a cheeseburger and fries.
And when the newscaster said
you’d died when an elephant shit on your head,
it didn't come as any surprise.
30. 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."
31. As a poet, I never claimed to be any good.
If you think I did, you've misunderstood.
I only said that between me and Shakespeare,
there's only one winner-take-all there.
And I left it up to you to guess who.
32. 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.
33. 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.
34. That of your sweet love
I could never quite get enough ─
not from below ─ not from above ─
that’s sorta kind of ─
what I was sitting here thinking of.
35. 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.
36. You don't know me, but I wrote a poem about you,
when I saw you standing at the bus stop last Friday ─ about a quarter past two.
I wrote it because what I saw in your being
is something every poet dreams about seeing ─
a person's green and blue ─ soaking right through.
37. 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?
38. 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.
39. 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 right on blinking
even when you don't pay ‘em a cent.
40. I asked old Mrs. O'Leary
what she thought about string theory.
She said, "I don't believe in such a thing,
because it doesn't cover everything,
and what it leaves uncovered can be pretty darn scary.
41. When babies are conceived with such alacrity around the clock,
how can God decide so quickly who gets a little pussy and who gets a little cock?
Yeah, I know! ─ it's all about the xx and about the xy.
But what if God, perchance, adds a bit extra of y to a little girl,
or a bit extra of x to a little guy?
You say that would never happen? Can you exxplain why?
42 “We took our dog to get tutored.”
“Took your dog to get neutered?”
“No ─ what I said was ─ we took our dog to get tutored.”
“Tutored for what?”
“What to expect after we get him neutered.”
43. Last night, I killed me some sheep.
Having to count 'em was keeping me from falling asleep.
Tonight, I do battle
with a big herd of cattle
that somebody, I’m sure, has prayed the Lord to keep.
44. When he sat there watching them cremate his body,
he thought their work was just a little bit shoddy.
He woulda preferred
if the fire had been hotter by a third,
and if friends had been invited to toast him with a hot toddy.
45. As I reflect on my body’s daily decay,
I wonder ─ did God really mean to do it this way?
Couldn't He have let me journey toward life's end ─ whole ─ and entire ─
instead of having part after part of me periodically misfire?
You say, "Yes, He really meant to do it this way?"
Okay.
46. I'm just one poem among a hundred billion,
to be followed, no doubt, by another hundred zillion.
But what sets me apart ─
is that I do burp ─
I do fart ─
and, moreover, I take it all to heart.
47. I live in a small, mobile home,
about 5600 miles from the outskirts of Rome,
about 7200 miles from the waters of the Ganges,
and about 5100 miles from Machu Picchu in the peaks of the Andes.
It's a nice, cozy little home,
where every day, I try to come up with at least onenew spankingspanking new poem.
48. Every day, whether it's nice or bad weather,
my dog and I go on a long walk together,
which I know he enjoys much more than I,
because he gets to sniff everything nice that comes by,
but ─ not I.
49. I wrote a poem that alleges
that I left her a little too rough around the edges,
and would I kindly try to rewrite.
So, all night long, I added and deleted,
moved around and repeated,
till she finally said, "Yeah, that feels just about right."
50. When I was still smoking two packs a day,
struggling every morning trying to hack the phlegm away,
my wife would get down on her knees and beg me to quit ─
that's how afraid she was I was gonna die from that shit.
And so I'd say, "For you, Honey, anything, okay? ─ Just not today.”
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-end
Comments, suggestions, or questions? Please email Rio Jansen at rio_jansen@hotmail.com