Sad Limericks

[Denny]

(I am sorry, but nothing with the words "carving knife" in it can be sad. Gross, yes; sad, no.)

you obviously haven't seen cousin Vinnie carve a turkey....

[peeplj]

Excellent. FJohn and 'Grats are getting close I think. But it seems to be necessary to take liberties with the meter of the first line, or all hope of sadness is lost. (I am sorry, but nothing with the words "carving knife" in it can be sad. Gross, yes; sad, no.) I am on the fence about flying souls.

My stomach felt all fluttery
When 'Bloo critiqued my poetry
He liked not my knife
Or my poems of strife,
So I went off to post in Proctology.

--James

[Walden]

you obviously haven't seen cousin Vinnie

Last major screen appearance of Herman Munster. Sad indeed.

[Innocent Bystander]

I tried and I tried and I tried
And I thought about people who'd died
But my striving for pathos
Just ended in bathos
So I cried and I cried and I cried.

[chrisoff]

you obviously haven't seen cousin Vinnie

Last major screen appearance of Herman Munster. Sad indeed.

Herman's screen life ends in ignominy
on the set of my cousin vinny
a screen legend he'd been
oh old freddy gwynne
now he's remembered in a film with Joe Pesci

[emmline]

Excellent. FJohn and 'Grats are getting close I think. But it seems to be necessary to take liberties with the meter of the first line, or all hope of sadness is lost. (I am sorry, but nothing with the words "carving knife" in it can be sad. Gross, yes; sad, no.) I am on the fence about flying souls.

No you're right.
Which is why, when I read the weird meter in yours, Bloo, I thought "that's not a limerick."
It is rather hard to write a veritable limerick that does not end with a wry twist.
I think FJohn's is closest.

[Walden]

With AIDS pediatric once born,
To face ostracism and scorn.
Child without hope,
Shot full of dope.
Alone, full of grief, and forlorn.

[gonzo914]

It is so very hard to write a limerick about a throbbing tongue, and this is the best I could do on short notice --

Gaily festooned with liver and lung
And adorned with a still throbbing tongue,
This fanatical fellah
Has gone to meet allah;
They're cleaning him up with a spongue.


(And for those of you with a tight grip on the bloody obvious -- Yes, I know that's not how you spell "sponge.")

[FJohnSharp]

With AIDS pediatric once born,
To face ostracism and scorn.
Child without hope,
Shot full of dope.
Alone, full of grief, and forlorn.

This is a real downer

[FJohnSharp]

Excellent. FJohn and 'Grats are getting close I think. But it seems to be necessary to take liberties with the meter of the first line, or all hope of sadness is lost. (I am sorry, but nothing with the words "carving knife" in it can be sad. Gross, yes; sad, no.) I am on the fence about flying souls.

I think the last line is what trips up most of them. People are expecting a punch line and you have to go so far the opposite direction or people will read humor into it all on their own. The last line needs to be unmistakably serious.

[Flyingcursor]

With AIDS pediatric once born,
To face ostracism and scorn.
Child without hope,
Shot full of dope.
Alone, full of grief, and forlorn.

This is a real downer

Yep. Party's over.

[fyffer]

Yep. Party's over.

No! No! Not yet! I just got here!

Tho' I heard Flydood say, short-sighted
That this limerick party's short-nighted.
It just makes me cry
To consider that I
May not even have been invited

To render a limerick sad
Is a challenge I've never quite had
So, let's give it a shot
I'll see what I've got
Though it may simply turn out to be bad

One day, while outside it was storming,
Our puppy fell ill without warning.
The next day we awoke,
And found the poor bloke
Was hard, cold, and dead in the morning

[Bloomfield]

Bill's bedrock of faith is undone
A lifetime of hate has begun
As long as he lives
He can never forgive
The drunk driver who murdered his son.

With AIDS pediatric once born,
To face ostracism and scorn.
Child without hope,
Shot full of dope.
Alone, full of grief, and forlorn.

I think the last line is what trips up most of them. People are expecting a punch line and you have to go so far the opposite direction or people will read humor into it all on their own. The last line needs to be unmistakably serious.

But it seems to be necessary to take liberties with the meter of the first line, or all hope of sadness is lost.

No you're right.
Which is why, when I read the weird meter in yours, Bloo, I thought "that's not a limerick."
It is rather hard to write a veritable limerick that does not end with a wry twist.
I think FJohn's is closest.

Very interesting observations here. I think while FJS's is pretty sad (it put a knot in my stomach), the last line resembles a punchline too much. Walden's approach (brilliantly depressing, except for the "shot full of dope" line, which doesn't quite click) shows a way around that: heap on the misery relentlessly. That works because the last three lines of the limerick can have slightly different thrusts:

...
wait for it
wait for it
Here comes the ridiculous twist.

or

...
build it up
build it up
pile it on, pile it on, pile it on.

The second one is the one for sad limericks, I think, but you can't go overboard, because excessive horror is absurd, and absurdity if funny. Twists are inherently funny, it seems, unless they are the twists of the knife that has already stabbed you.

Another promising approach is the Meaningful Question, because you can give it the inflection of a punchline without actually presenting a punchline:

It is Autumn, the mulberry bare,
and the children ascending the stair.
Will the parking-lot dawn
show my childhood foregone,
or the blackbirds that catch in my hair?

This is also tricky pull off, though, and requires a sadness that builds up like a vast empty landscape, before the concluding question drives home the point of human insignificance and ignorance.

I'll stop editing this post now, but not before I point out that I think Congrats ought to have gone with "forgone" rather than with "foregone;" but that may well be needlessly fussy.

Fun stuff. Keep them coming.

[Bloomfield]

Tho' I heard Flydood say, short-sighted
That this limerick party's short-nighted.
It just makes me cry
To consider that I
May not even have been invited

To render a limerick sad
Is a challenge I've never quite had
So, let's give it a shot
I'll see what I've got
Though it may simply turn out to be bad

One day, while outside it was storming,
Our puppy fell ill without warning.
The next day we awoke,
And found the poor bloke
Was hard, cold, and dead in the morning

Of course I was giggling by the time I got to "hard, cold, and dead."

Nice try, particularly the first one. You're invited never fear.

[djm]

Sad stories don't represent me.
Life affirming I'd much rather be.
To be up with the dawn,
Feeling bold, feeling young,
To collapse as the stroke levels me.

djm