Poetic Reflections: Horror Limericks

Time, time, time. I think it’s time. Yes, that’s what it is. The next subject for a poetic reflection. No, no, no. Scratch that. Well, it is high time for a new column. I mean, here it is the sixth year of writing them (having passed the fifth anniversary ten months ago). It is nearly the seventh year, in fact, and I’m just getting around to it? I would say this is long overdue. The clock has been sprung, and the pendulum has flown off the handle with the cuckoo bird. It’s a lot like that time-changing nonsense where we are instructed to set our clocks forward or backward to lose or gain an hour. An entire sixty minutes! It just happened again. This month. Right now, the very day I am getting around to my next column. I lost an hour. No wonder I feel confused. And it’s not as if there are too many or any to spare . . .

I have a serious problem with there not being enough hours in the day. I would join a group for it, but I am not that good with groups.

Now I will probably obsess over losing an hour. I should start a petition to end this madness, before they swipe any more of the time I have left. I’m not getting any younger! But if I started a petition I doubt that I could finish a column this month, which is more important. Next month it will be a full year since the last two.

Wow, I have been busy. With all sorts of busyness. Such as skipping months, along with skipping to the loo, skipping rope . . . Nonetheless, I am back. You can pinch me, or yourself. It isn’t a dream. My apologies in case you are among the few who might have missed these rambled sojourns into the dark and light side of verse. There is usually a good deal of contrast, as well as general absurdity. An unstable mixture of extremes, like a science experiment gone wrong. Or a witch’s cauldron, where who knows what was thrown in and what could crawl out. Yes, that pretty much describes it.

What have I been doing? Why do you ask? What have you been doing? I’ve been writing stories and poems . . . for anthologies, magazines, my latest horror collection. Oh, and I released the second volume of my poetry series last year, The Queen Of Hats. For Twenty Fifteen (which is the present, in case you’re reading this from the future) I plan to wrap up Volume Three, Blood On The Moon. It’s in progress. It still needs a bunch of additional poems, and more of my peculiar illustrations . . . but hey, the cover’s done! That’s something! And its thirteen chapters are half complete since they begin with previous columns. I hope to wrap it up this year, in spite of the missing hour.

Oh sure, they’ll give an hour back in the Fall. By then I’ll be way behind with everything as a result of losing one now, so nice try!

I was also busy cramming columns into the fourth volume of the series, which still needs a couple after this one. It’s all very exciting. To me, anyway.

I have been more off than usual in keeping on track. Sporadic as they may be the past two years, I do hope to be more consistent with these poetic prattles. And I hope you will bear with my erratic tendencies. It is best not to force any form of artistic endeavor, or it can become a labor of labor rather than a labor of the heart and soul. I never want it to become just “work” for me. I prefer it to be inspired. So I beg your indulgence as well as your patience. And your attention span. I do not necessarily require your understanding, since I dabble in nonsense as much as sense.

Harumph. The above has nothing to do with the current theme, which is —

Wait, I just realized this very column is a milestone. Let us bang a drum, crash a cymbal, toot a horn. Are you ready for the big announcement? Are you holding your breath with anticipation? Stop that right now! I don’t like to be rushed.

Here it is. Drumroll, please. Monkey . . . somebody wind up the monkey! No, not the cymbal monkey, the drum monkey. Oops, the drum rolled away. Oh well. Enough monkey business.

Here it is, again . . .

Ahem.

This is my fiftieth column.

(Insert eerie music. No, a fanfare. Hmm, perhaps an ice-cream-truck or calliope tune? Yes, that would be odd. Maestro? Where did the maestro go? Nevermind. Forget the music. I’ll just hum a bit, off key. Or not. My throat’s kind of scratchy. You’ll have to imagine the humming because one cannot really itch a scratchy throat.)

What’s that? “Nevermind” isn’t a word? It is if I say it, and I just said it. I say it all the time. Most of the time. I say it, I will have you know, whenever I say it!

What was I saying? Oh, fifty! That’s big, isn’t it? What do you mean it’s only half of a hundred? I can count. I have fingers and toes. It’s still an event, worth celebrating. Who invited that wet sock? And that peanut gallery? The wet blanket did? And who invited the wet blanket?

Nevermind. (See?) Maybe I was cold. Or too dry. The point of all this is that it’s time for a celebration. Something special. It’s an occasion, which only happens occasionally. Or just once in this particular instance. Send in the clowns! Let there be cake! A nice chocolate vegan cake. And balloons! It calls for ducks too. I love how they quack. Not that geese are anything to sneeze at. Or mongooses. Mongeese. Unless you’re allergic to that sort of thing.

WARNING: The following three paragraphs are off-topic remarks.

In the midst of not writing this preamble, writing a prior preamble that wound up unfinished, two cohorts and I stopped at the San Diego Central Library to pick up a medal from my first Local Author Exhibit in Twenty Fourteen. Browsing at the gift shop, I found a button that said READ and another saying BEST-SELLER! so I got them, although I cannot in honesty wear a Best-Seller lapel label as of yet. They didn’t have one for the lapel level I am at, more of an UN-Best-Seller; possibly a Worst-Seller. I’ve saved the button on my desk as inspiration. I shall literally keep hoping for the BEST. When you write out of love, for the sake of art — and because your head would burst from ideas if you didn’t — whether you are a Best-Seller, a Better-Seller, a So-So Seller, or a Least-Seller like me seems irrelevant. What matters is that you are read, and therefore I can proudly wear the one that says READ, for it can also imply that I am Read. Thank you for that.

On the same day, my sons and I stopped to see Godzilla at a theater — sitting in the front row like I used to as a kid when I would go to matinees alone and get lost in the stories on the screen. (Between reading countless library books.) Godzilla harkens to Sunday matinees at home when the original Japanese films were shown on the tube, attended with my brother and mother, a cherished piece of nostalgia. These moments are a quintessential part of who I am as a creative spirit. And the big green monstersaurus has long been a favorite, so I cried at the end of the new Godzilla. Monsters are wonderful.

Visiting hat shops made it a perfect day, because hats are another facet of who I am and have been since I can remember. While she sat through the Godzilla movies, my mother did not comprehend my monster and hat passions. She took toys and hats away that people gave me if she felt they weren’t appropriate for a girl. I stubbornly developed my own style in wardrobe as much as in writing or art. And I have plenty of cool toys!

Okay then, back to the matter and the column at hand. What shall we talk about now? I’m not even sure I still have an audience after the last column (eleven months ago) with the antiquated Shakespearebabble. There have been loyal readers who weathered the thick and the thin times, whether I made up my own words or digressed from the subject (not to mention any subject whatsoever) into the nothingness of sheer jabber. I marvel over this more than any comic-book hero or villain, if you get my drift. It simply astonishes me. What were we talking about again? Or better still, what weren’t we talking about that we should be?

Hat shops, Godzilla, Central Library . . . ah, it must be books! Of course. They are very close to my heart as an author, poet, illustrator, and reader-slash-bookworm. Okay, I don’t actually eat them, but I do relish gobbling a good tale. I have lapsed as a reader, unfortunately, since I spend most of my time doing the other stuff. Even in my sleep, which is very disconcerting when I awake to find that I didn’t actually get any of it down. I guess I need to learn how to sleep-write. And sleep-edit. Maybe sleep-read!

I miss reading books. Paradoxically, I am surrounded by them. Many are reference tomes, primarily word books. I love words. And I do read those in snippets. Books often have words, whether a lot or a little. Some have more pictures than words. But if each picture is worth a thousand words, then I suppose they do have a fairly good amount of indirect language. The word books I am referring to, if you will pardon the pun, although it was entirely intentional, are very special for they contain a large number of rare words. Too many folks these days only like the commonest of terms. I adore the strangest and most peculiar.

I really went off on some deep-end diving-board tangents here. I’ve been saving the babble too long. Oh dear, look at the time. And the calendar! It’s already Spring! There was a Supermoon and a Solar Eclipse on the Equinox. Then it was the International Day Of Happiness, and World Poetry Day! It appears there are any number of reasons to celebrate this month, including that tradition about wearing green. And the Fifteenth, the Ides Of March, was my mother’s eightieth birthday. She’s been gone fifteen years but is not forgotten. It is truly an exceptional month. The perfect one to publish my fiftieth column.

Speaking of which, you may have noticed up there at the top of this ridiculousness that I typed “Horror Limericks”. There is an explanation. I promised a friend I would write some limericks, as that is the main form of poetry she likes. And, believe it or not, I have not written any limericks since beginning my poetic reflections. You know, these columns. I could have written some as a child. That was ages ago. Many ages. Some very Dark Ages. Perhaps you’ve heard of them.

I can be quite nonsensical, so it amazes me that I had not yet turned my poet’s wit to the topic of Limericks. Great absurd limericks have been penned, though not by me. This is a tragic oversight, and I am grateful to a friend for bringing them up. Then I thought: I should do some Horror Limericks! I’ve never heard of those. I’ve done Horror Haiku, which I had not heard of either until I did some. It was rather popular. I will, of course, do some nonsense limericks as well. How could I not? I am nothing if not absurd. I may even throw in some anti-limericks.

Confession: They will probably primarily be anti-limericks.

I may not be the best limericker, but I will try my best whatever that may be.

Without further ado, here are some limericks for Vix.

(See what I did there? Clever, eh? Wink, wink.)

Okay, this might not be what she meant. It is, however, what I would write. And so I did.

Egad, where did March go? It has slipped by (thanks to that missing hour). Soon it will be April Fool’s and I will have to say I was just kidding . . . . .