Exercise: Nonsense poetry

[bodkin]

Hi,

Glad to see an exercise forum here on Poets' Graves. Here's one I tried that worked quite well on another site...

--

Let's write nonsense poems!

Examples:

Spike Milligan
Edward Lear
Lewis Carroll

It seems to me that if you use nonsense words, it works best if you have an idea of the meaning...

Or you can use nonsense sentence structure...

Or coherent sentences about nonsensical subject matter...

Here's my work-in-progress:

Elliptical cams...

Zeitgeist talking halogen --
I've know it for years --
when the semiotic ridicule unwound
and fell sparrows crapped
on the wronger side of town
and their razor-sharp espresso
marred the grass.

Ah! But she was a sweet-shop lass,
who sweated buckets and thimbles
between the licorice shoelace
and quite against the grain
of a cereal-bar-fly-spray.

But we all drank text in those days --
many of them lost --
when poesies of electrons grounded
out their cigarettes in the maelstrom
of your car.

You do know what I mean --
that is who you are.

[Danté]

No hope

Splitting harmonics until sounds
of horses on barbed wire
begin knitting socks for sheep
grazing rocks in a car park
where a zephyr ticks-over slowly.

My eclectic violin formed of jaws
of porpoises that thrashed
for ages as each sinew tore free
leaving what appeared to be labia
by the hundreds, pursed for a kiss.

Brushing glycerine onto a halibut
makes the time pass quickly
while I recite obscenities aloud
an old woman walks by smiling
at my naked buttocks, puckering up.

I ask her for a light, she points to a chapel.

[bodkin]

Hi Danté,

Thanks for joining in!

I love the eclectic violin, and brushing glycerine into a halibut.

But the last line just cracked me up...

Ian

[Ros]

I like both of these. Just goes to show that nonsense can have quite a powerful meaning.

[nar]

A brief attempt:

These damned mindtrousers
have become uncalibooted again, and
flinking continues in my kneeabellum,
without synapse-braces to scoop it all unanklewards.

I crotched my fleetings with brief
use of braincycle-clips,
lest they ride sockingly slipperwards,
leaving brainblogs in my lobeclogs.

[Sharra]

hehehe nar thats brilliant
Sharra
x

[bodkin]

Hi Nar,

This is very strange and wonderful but you forgot to mention the Thighneal gland

LOL

Ian

[nar]

Hey Sharra,

Ha - just a bit of fun. Glad you liked it.

This is very strange and wonderful but you forgot to mention the Thighneal gland

hehe... good catch, Ian!(I loved your electrical paradigm shifter piece BTW).

I also forgot the limbic cortex.

This doesn't deserve a rewrite does it

Cheers, peeps.

- Neil

[bodkin]

Sometimes something can start as a bit of fun and then acquire a deeper meaning along the way...

I sometimes produce my best work when I just knock something together quickly for an exercise.

Not always, of course, and usually I only decide something is good a week or two later...

Ian

[bodkin]

Disorganised crime

Cemetery overcoating
comes unstitched, leaves
bodice unseamly floating
in the harbourdashery,
and now a polite inspector
has arrived
mourning suited
steely eyed
to make police conversation
with all the
unknowing
witlesses.

[Danté]

Nice one Bodkin,

I can see this thread is going to be a regular reading haunt, some good stuff on here.
The nonsense approach does allow some real freedom, I have a feeling that some
great poems will be put together here.

All the best

Danté

[Ros]

I love unknowing witlesses. We've all met a few of them.

You're right, Dante, this is a thread to follow

[Elphin]

Cow and Bull Stories

Upon yon hill
there stauns a coo,
it must have moved
'cos its no there noo

or

There, stauns a coo,
abin the road.
Run maun, run
its a bull be Goad!

stauns - stands; abin - above; maun-man; Goad-God

[nar]

He reeled in the ketchup, and
cast nets for mustard, and
trawled those mayonnaise, while
harpooning the horseradish.

As ever, he was fishing
for condiments.

[Ros]

We've banned people for puns like that, Neil

[nar]

Ha, I'm sure. You've deanagrammed me. Now the puns too!?! Whatever next - please don't take spy moonerisms away.

- Neil

[bodkin]

I guess "nonsense" and "very silly indeed" are not incompatible

[nar]

Ian, well perhaps - nonetheless, I can't not argue that your assetion may have reduced merit, despite my non-commital rejection of the contrary to the disputed original point, counter-evidence of which was never meant to be the main arguement.

- N

[mesmie]

Darkle trunkles the saddest tune
aye, flurtling on a sorry moon.
I'll wail and forrock, hear
borrocks boom, the desolate
crunk of nurkles..

Ah flobble frink
I see you there crink corple,
behind the chair,
sniff jumkles then, see if I care
you're snoffle lumps you
will not share, not one small
flot for me?

(sobbing)

Oh Darkle foobit, wise flobblejobs
that flutter in the breezy breeze,
How I wish I'd grunckled less

for it flooed me to my knees.

[David]

Mesmie, that's Burns, surely? One of his best.

[Ros]

Definitely sounded Scottish to me

[bodkin]

The limits of reason

Thoughtful says he, broadly speaking
thoughts of sorts that helter-skelter
round the round head and all through
the mind he holds (it's well regarded)
and the think-song reels and shudders
its wheels so nearly come unseated
unsuited, maybe, and uncompleted
while the grease of pleasure in his thought
runs very dry now, so he cannot sort
one from the next and hasn't moved
from where he sat, when he exclaimed
Gosh, I never thought of that!

--

Not quite as nonsensical as I thought it would be. I could add a fish to each line...

[bodkin]

Hi Mesmie,

this is lovely in it's richness and suggested meanings.

As for "flurtling on a sorry moon", I think we've probably all done that, especially when we've had a beer or two.

Great stuff...

Ian

p.s. that last poem of mine was inspired by Nar's cunningly worded post just a few up...

[mesmie]

David, Burns? More Vogan methinks!

Ros och aye, ah a braw highland cattle beast no doubt!

Ian at this time of the morning yours makes perfect sense!


mes

[BenJohnson]

Mesmie I love to see this one being preformed at a poetry reading, preferably by someone with a deep, serious voice. Very Vogan indeed, but we survived.