Art and limerick by David Sklar
Author: admin
Seamus Heaney calls the Poetry Crisis Line
COUNSELOR: Poetry Crisis Line, what is your emergency?
CALLER: Cloudburst and steady downpour now
COUNSELOR: So you’re calling to talk about the weather?
CALLER: for days.
COUNSELOR: Right. If you want to talk to days, I may need to transfer you to another counselor when my shift ends.
CALLER: Still mammal,
COUNSELOR: That’s correct. I don’t think we have any birds or reptiles working today.
CALLER: straw-footed on the mud,
COUNSELOR: I don’t know what shoes the other counselor will be wearing.
CALLER: he begins to sense the weather / by his skin.
COUNSELOR: Um, yes. If you go out in the rain, your skin will feel it.
CALLER: A nimble snout of flood
COUNSELOR: So there’s rain up your nose?
CALLER: licks over stepping-stones
COUNSELOR: So you’ve got a dog out in the rain? They love that.
CALLER: and goes uprooting.
COUNSELOR: So you need to get him out of your garden. Do you have any dog treats?
CALLER: He fords
COUNSELOR: No—you want him out of the garden, but don’t encourage him to chase cars.
CALLER: his life by
COUNSELOR: Yeah, it could risk his life. Can you call him? What’s his name?
CALLER: sounding.
COUNSELOR: You mean Sounder? Like in the book?
CALLER: Soundings.
COUNSELOR: That’s a strange name for a dog, but OK.
From “Gifts of Rain” by Seamus Heaney
From the all-female adaptation of The Hobbit
BILBELLE: What have I got in my pockets?
GOLLUMME: It has pocketses?
BILBELLE: Yes, but what is inside?
GOLLUMME: We wants the pocketses! GIVE US THE POCKETSES!
BILBELLE: Uh, they’re attached.
GOLLUMME: WE WILL SKIN IT AND TAKE ITS POCKETSES!
BILBELLE: I mean they’re attached to my pants. I can give you my waistcoat.
GOLLUMME: It has pocketses?
BILBELLE: Yes, it has pocketses. Um, I mean pockets.
GOLLUMME: My precious.
Mark Antony calls the Poetry Crisis Line
COUNSELOR: Poetry Crisis Line, what is your emergency?
CALLER: I am dying,
COUNSELOR: Can I send an ambulance? Where are you calling from?
CALLER: Egypt,
COUNSELOR: Egypt? What are you doing there?
CALLER: dying;
COUNSELOR: Right. Is there something I can do for you?
CALLER: Give me some wine,
COUNSELOR: I thought you were in Egypt?
CALLER: and
COUNSELOR: You’re somewhere else as well?
CALLER: let me speak a little.
COUNSELOR: Right, you’re the dying guy. I’ll shut up now.
If All Poems Were Limericks: “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg
I saw my generation’s best minds
gone mad, but still trying to unwind,
and I got so upset
that I’m howling! And yet
I’m not sure what I thought I would find.
Charles Bukowski re-calls the Poetry Crisis Line
COUNSELOR: Poetry Crisis Line, what is your emergency?
CALLER: there’s a bluebird in my heart that / wants to get out
COUNSELOR: Literally? Or is that a metaphor? Or, like, a simile?
CALLER: but I’m too tough for him,
COUNSELOR: It’s OK. You can admit if your heart is fluttering.
CALLER: I say, stay in there,
COUNSELOR: So you recognize that you want him there?
CALLER: I’m not going / to let anybody see / you.
COUNSELOR: So you’ve made a birdhouse in your soul, but it’s on the down-low?
Read the rest of “bluebird” by Charles Bukowski here.
Excerpt From Monty Python and the Club of Fights
TYLER: The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club.
ENGLISH PEASANT: Oi, you just did it there.
TYLER: Did what?
ENGLISH PEASANT: Talked about Fight Club.
TYLER: No I didn’t.
ENGLISH PEASANT: Yes you did. You said “The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club.” That sounds like talking about it to me.
TYLER: You can talk about it when you’re there.
ENGLISH PEASANT: You didn’t say that.
TYLER: What?
ENGLISH PEASANT: You said, “The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club.” You can’t carve out an exception after the fact. Unless you want to make that the second rule.
TYLER: The second rule?
ENGLISH PEASANT: Well, yes, you could throw in a second rule, beginning with some hoity-toity language like, “Exceptions to the first rule shall include…” or some such.
TYLER: But there already is a second rule.
ENGLISH PEASANT: Are you sure?
TYLER: Yes.
ENGLISH PEASANT: You’re not just making it up to sound clever, are you?
TYLER: No.
ENGLISH PEASANT: Well, let’s have it then.
TYLER: What?
ENGLISH PEASANT: The second rule. What is it?
TYLER: The second rule of Fight club is you do not talk about Fight Club.
ENGLISH PEASANT: Oi, now ’e’s just repeating ’imself. I knew you were making it up.
John Dryden calls the Poetry Crisis Line
COUNSELOR: Poetry Crisis Line, what is your emergency?
CALLER: Why should a foolish marriage vow, / Which long ago was made, / Oblige us to each other now / When passion is decay’d?
COUNSELOR: Good question. Are there children?
CALLER: We lov’d, and we lov’d, as long as we could, / Till our love was lov’d out in us both:
COUNSELOR: Sounds like you tried but couldn’t conceive. Is there joint property?
CALLER: But our marriage is dead, when the pleasure is fled:
COUNSELOR: I see. Have you discussed this with your spouse?
CALLER: ‘Twas pleasure first made it an oath.
COUNSELOR: So maybe just try something new.
CALLER: If I have pleasures for a friend,
COUNSELOR: Uh, I said something new, not someone new. Unless your spouse is also into that.
CALLER: And farther love in store,
COUNSELOR: It certainly sounds like you’re into that.
CALLER: What wrong has he whose joys did end,
COUNSELOR: That is a matter for you and your spouse to discuss openly, before it builds deeper resentment and…
CALLER: And who could give no more?
COUNSELOR: …and you’re already talking about alimony.
Read the original here
Martin Niemöller calls the Poetry Crisis Line (illustrated)
Bonus Post: A Limerick for Surreptitious Sonnet Day
I caught a lass reading a sonnet
from a folio hid in her bonnet.
I asked her, “Is that
a book under your hat?”
Said she, “What else would I put on it?”
(Surreptitious Sonnet Day is apparently a thing. Sort of.)