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The Young Man From Japan

I think I've posted this before but I still giggle every time I think of it.
Also an excellent lesson in meter [grins]

There is a young man in Japan
whose poems just never will scan
he sits up all night
but try as he might
he always ends up putting as many words in the last line as he possibly can.

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Comments

but as I am posting a collection of my older poems myself I appreciate seeing it again. It is a cute one if you will excuse the term.
I wish I could write a limerick, but try as I might I cannot find a subject worthy, much less get the meter to work.

W. H. Snow

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. Percy Bysshe Shelley

Learn how, teach others.
The NeoPoet Mentor Program
http://www.neopoet.com/mentor/about

they are so much fun.

A while ago I issued the challenge for anyone to write a serious limerick. It's almost impossible, a few came close.

I would just like to see your lighter side. You have the skills, I know, why not let loose and give us a few? Preferably smutty.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

just saying :)

Chris Hall - Tasmania

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.

it was a free-for-all challenge so go for it bro!
Just post any attempts to the Stream with (serious limerick) after the title.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

Oh to write a limerick
that does not bring me stick
but when I try
my mind runs dry
and empties really quick

Keith Logan
the happy chappy
https://www.neopoet.com/community-guidelines

You got the rhyming scheme but the meter is miles off.
And you know the tricky part? It is not a strict metric scheme. There are always two meters but they can vary from limerick to limerick as long as it sounds right.
read a few more.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

I'd like to write a limerick
that does not bring me any stick
but whenever I try
my mind simply runs dry
and so it empties far too quick

I'm away now to listen to Mireille Mathieu on YouTube.

Keith Logan
the happy chappy
https://www.neopoet.com/community-guidelines

Can you hear that the last line doesn't quite scan?
that doesn't bring me any stick
and it empties far too quick

I'm not sure, it's subtle.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

that "it" does not belong.

Keith Logan
the happy chappy
https://www.neopoet.com/community-guidelines

anyone worried about their verse bringing them stick, whether the content is humorous or serious, can not be writing authentically.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

Lol, even I got that last line. :)
Ali

cool.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

And it is funny :) - Python fan I am sensing..?

Chris Hall - Tasmania

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.

are probably bigger influences on me than Shakespeare and Coleridge.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

Brought up on Norwegian Blue I was - and I think my brother once sat in the cinema through 4 showings of The Holy Grail, Probably because our mother was a hamster and our father smelled of elderberries.
As for forks...............and candles!
Wanders off singing 'always look on the bright side of life'
Jx

PS oh and the limerick isn't bad either.

------------
Remember we are a workshop site.
Don't forget to offer critique on poems you read.

Sorry, couldn't resist, in full:

(Four well-dressed men sitting together at a vacation resort. 'Farewell to Thee' being played in the background on Hawaiian guitar.)

Michael Palin: Ahh.. Very passable, this, very passable.

Graham Chapman: Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chassilier wine, ay Gessiah?

Terry Jones: You're right there Obediah.

Eric Idle: Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Chateau de Chassilier wine?

MP: Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.

GC: A cup ' COLD tea.

EI: Without milk or sugar.

TJ: OR tea!

MP: In a filthy, cracked cup.

EI: We never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.

GC: The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

TJ: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.

MP: Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, 'Money doesn't buy you happiness.'

EI: 'E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'. We used to live in this tiiiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof.

GC: House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!

TJ: You were lucky to have a ROOM! *We* used to have to live in a corridor!

MP: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor! Woulda' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph.

EI: Well when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a piece of tarpolin, but it was a house to US.

GC: We were evicted from *our* hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake!

TJ: You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road.

MP: Cardboard box?

TJ: Aye.

MP: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, our Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!

GC: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!

TJ: Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.

EI: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, (pause for laughter), drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing 'Hallelujah.'

MP: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.

ALL: Nope, nope..

Chris Hall - Tasmania

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.

she says with tears streaming down her eyes.
Jx
how about a voice recording.................? wi' yorksha accent an all

------------
Remember we are a workshop site.
Don't forget to offer critique on poems you read.

Double post - laughing too hard obvs.

------------
Remember we are a workshop site.
Don't forget to offer critique on poems you read.

And had it it easy..I just wanted to be a simple poet, not one of these bourgeois mill workers!

Chris Hall - Tasmania

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.

Think about what global corporate finance austerity measures will put us through tomorrow.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

but abject poverty and privatisation till t' Christmas!

Socialism - dirty word.
Collective bargaining - entirely unheard of
Blocking all the roads up like the French truckies do when they shite on your rights? - Totally alien concept on the young
A game of footy - attracts a crowd of forty thousand to watch grown men chase a bag of wind
Close a hospital ward - and you're lucky to get handful of placards, milling around the parliament

How times change Jess.

Or,, accounting for "bread and circuses" - perhaps not.

Chris Hall - Tasmania

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.

We had to beat ourselves up with baseball bats and tear-gas ourselves to break our own strikes.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

I recall drinking out of jam jars in my childhood.
I think the American form of jam is jelly.

Keith Logan
the happy chappy
https://www.neopoet.com/community-guidelines

A Two Ronnies sketch that made me laugh. Their timing was so good that even something fairly trite came off as funny.

Keith Logan
the happy chappy
https://www.neopoet.com/community-guidelines

Do you know I'd forgotten that was the two Ronnies.
So it was, but same era. Some superbly written and delivered humour then.
Jx

------------
Remember we are a workshop site.
Don't forget to offer critique on poems you read.

was from the life of Brian. "He is not the Messiah, he is a very naughty boy"

Keith Logan
the happy chappy
https://www.neopoet.com/community-guidelines

Yeah, i saw it before in a comment in one of my poems. You directed it at me and I laughed some of my ass off........stan

Sorry, I need to know more about this man from Japan. Why won't his poems scan? Why does he try to put so many words in the last line? Is he really from Japan, and if so, why is he writing in English? Is he really a "young" man? How do we define youth in Japanese society.

Other than that I enjoyed your poem. :)

:)

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

yet through pure cruelty I will allow this profound piece to remain a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

Perhaps the guy ain't from Japan
but rather from somewhere down south
where he furrows his brow hoping somehow
he'll spew poetry from his mouth

(sometimes I wish we had a 'like' button)
Try this on for scansion

Not Japanese guy, a yahoo uncouth
from somewhere further down south
where he furrows his brow
hoping somewhere somehow
he'll spew poetry out of his mouth

You're gonna get this one day, my friend. I almost literally hear the meter in my head, like a musical rhythm but I learned to do that from practice. Some lucky arseholes like Lonnie just march naturally to the beat of their broken drum.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

If I keep stumbling upon a right one I'll eventually get to where I can do it consistantly lol......stan

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