Spanking Rhymes?

And eager to join in and play
The Queen said 'My husband and I ...'

I'm game ... and I'll submit a poem too! (groan).

So did McGonagall, and he became famous!

I think it is a great idea Flops... count me in

For those who like rhymes here is a limerick that is at least 50 years old:

There was a young lady from Bangor,
Who slept while the ship lay at anchor.
She awoke with dismay
To hear the mate say,
"Let's lift up the top-sheet and spanker."

For those who are unfamiliar with nautical terms, top-sheets and spankers are types of sails that are found on sailing ships.

Well I'm sure no poet, and now you all know it,
I'll stick with my prose while the rest of you rhyme,
of nates dusky rose, paddled time after time,
so wax on poetic e're bare bouncing bottom,
I don't like to rhyme 'em, I just like to swat 'em,
so pentameter iambic on the nubile maid's ass,
while I head for the bar...this time I'll just pass.

Now on the face of it the phrase "e're bare bouncing bottom" is obscure and might even be thought a mistake, since "e're" means "before", and it is not obvious why the person referred to here should be exhorted to "wax on poetic" before bouncing a bare bottom. However, syntactical analysis reveals that the intended meaning is almost certainly "so wax (verb - apply wax to) on poetic e're bare (that is, poetic before it is bared and presumably unpoetic after it is bared) bouncing bottom" - in other words, wax the bouncing bottom before you strip it.

maybe that should have been " 'ere". Or "on her" or something like that. Anyway, you make my point. I suck at this.

We'll return to prose again after the verse challenge.. we thought to keep things interesting we'd alternate between photo story challenges and 'something else' challenges.

Hey, it's all good. I'm just fooling around. I'm sure some challenges interest some of us and some don't, but we have a wide range of folks here with many different skills. Poetry isn't one of mine (see above).

Not really. I was taking off literary criticism. The great poet John Keats' first published poem was panned and he was told to go back to the day job (pharmacy).