Limericks

A strapping young actor named Harris
Suffered mortification in Paris
When a rip in his clothes
Saw his Hamlet exposed
As he stabbed an old man in the arras

An Eskimo, quite unconceited,
Had his modest proposal defeated
For a chocolate canoe
He retorted: ‘Oh poo –
Guess you can’t have your kayak and eat it.’

A chaste farmer’s daughter from Cheshire
Finally bowed to inordinate pressure
From her boyfriend to yield
They made love in a field
Till her Dad mowed them down with the thresher

An old poet who hailed from the Tyne
Wrote limericks with no last line.
When friends asked him: ‘Why, man?’
He replied: ‘Cos I can.’

There was a young girl from Kilbride
Who ate fifty apples and died.
It was her mother who found the body;
She lumbered in through the back door
Like a caveman, weighed down with groceries
(including, ironically, a dozen apples –
For she knew how her daughter loved apples)
And called out: ‘Alicia! Alicia!’
And recounting the story to police later
She’d remember the tetchy edge to her voice
Because she’d bumped her elbow
On the way out of the car
And there was a half-eaten bowl of cereal next to the sink
And she just felt like no one appreciated
All the work she did
‘Al-ic-i-a!’
The way her cry seemed to wither
Against the soft furnishings
Like the last muffled thump of a muted drum
The slow fission of her anger
As she waited for a: ‘Coming, Mum!’
The creak of the carpeted stairs
As she climbed
A vague unease building now
‘Alicia?’ inflected as a question
The frisson of transgression
As she twisted the cold plastic door knob
And entered a teenager’s room unbidden

The details become hazy here
Like a picture seen up-close,
She knows them all too well
Slack body slumped in black hoodie
Hair stiff with dried puke stuck up at Manga angles
And that awful, caustic smell

The funeral was delayed by six long, deadweight days
While the coroner investigated
In the end, he declared it
‘A prank gone wrong’
The local newspaper printed a picture
Of her grinning, bewhiskered
In a school production of the Lion King
And quoted her Headmistress
Who said:
‘Alicia was one of our brightest,
Most bubbly students. She was always
Willing to help. This is a tragic waste
Of a young life.’

A few days passed before
A national tabloid
Linked her death to a
Similar stunt on youtube
Where a Puerto Rican girl
Ate twenty boiled eggs before puking
Down her front
It slammed the ‘craze’
Amongst ‘our nation’s teens’
For grotesque self-abasement
In a bid for online status

But their feigned rage soon passed;
And nothing was learnt
APPLE DEATH MOTHER
BRIDGE PLUNGE RIDDLE
Came the page seven footnote, months later
Six awkward nouns
Like a question in an IQ test

O young girl from Kilbride
Sometimes the apple bites back
Had you forgotten Eden’s dismal flaw?
The bland facts of our windfallen knowledge
The worms that writhe in our rotten core