Limericks!

My favourite has always been:

While Titian was mixing rose madder,
His model posed nude on a ladder.
Her position, to Titian,
Suggested coition,
So he climbed up the ladder
And had'er.

My friend James P, who possesses a Big Brain, writes reviews for Important Magazines and shares my taste in Camels, has been trying his hand at that most tricky thing, writing the literary limerick. And masterful they are too: here's a taste:

The French Lieutenant's Woman

A couple who walk by the sea
meet a woman who turns out to be
a bit of bad news
(she ends up a muse).
— I'm the author — hello! look at me!

Midnight's Children

The hour of my birth was quite late,
I'm part psychic, my sense of smell's great.
I start out like Dickens,
and then the plot thickens:
Aha! I'm the Indian state!

The Line of Beauty

From Oxford, Nick's gone for the summer
to London, becoming a bummer.
He's reading the Master.
AIDS: what a disaster!
He'd have been better off as a plumber.

Glengarry Glen Ross

If Miller could do it, then — damn it!
I can write just as well if I cram it:
A play about salesmen
and how money ails men.
Yours Sincerely, &c., Dave Mamet.

©James Purdon 2007