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The One with the Haiku and the Limerick

9 August 2004

Dear Bard Members

Since brevity is the soul of wit this week's edition of ebard news will be entirely encapsulated in one single Haiku:

'Twas Bi-Polar Bear
who stormed the Friend in Hand Stage
baffled bemusement

Okay. I never claimed that it would be a good Haiku. Nor did I categorically guarantee that it would contain any wit. Just that it would be brief. And sadly, I'm lying about even that. I mean how can I stop myself, when I'm caught up in a wild whirligig of wayward words (not to mention unalleviated alliteration)? How can I 'just say no!' when I'm plucked, like a hapless insect, from the slavering jaws of a badly mixed metaphor* by that capricious mistress the Muse, as she gathers me up like a bushel of corn, or a pair of discarded underpants, from the threshing-room floor of her celestial typing-pool and smothers my screaming blue head between the rolling-hills of her perfumed bosom, and throatily demands - perhaps in the voice of Mae West, or a sexually re-assigned Barry Gibb - that I squeeze words from my brain like I was some kind of syntactical carrot-juicer? Hmmm?

* for further Mixed Metaphor recipes, tune in next week.

So, where were we? Ah yes, Haiku. Or is that Haikoos? Or that well known 70's soft-porn actress Haikoo Stark? 'Whatever' (as young folk are wont to say these days in modern American Picture Films shown at the Cinema). But to check out a true master of the Haiku art pay a visit to Pterodactyl Man's website http://www.geocities.com/paris/tower/5539/ Here's one of his delicious balls of pith:

Don't procrastinate
stick a lipstick in your ear
and make up your mind

And speaking of Pterodactyl Man, is it my imagination or does this dinosaur superhero share some dark genealogical lineage with Bi-Polar Bear - the all-singing, all-dancing, all-child-terrifying anti-Humphry that performed his hard-paw shuffle down at the Friend in Hand last Tues? No, it's definitely his imagination, and twisted and strange terrain it is at that. On the other paw, our second spesh guest last chewsday was Atarn Messiah, who was rather good, and had all sorts of people gasping 'who IS this fella?' (for all the right reasons, I might add).

What else happened? Oh yes. The open-section Slam! was rather morish, while the Limerick Comp attracted a new-record field of six contestants, mixing as it did the topics of school-funding for a Doomsday Cult and John Howard's drug confessions (he's confessed to sniffing Crack - George Bush's crack. Sorry, that's the third and last time I use that joke, I swear).

Anyway, here's a dirty Limerick my Mother once told me:

Ooer, ooer, ooer,
a boy fell down the sewer
he pulled the chain
and up he came
with a pocket full of manure

See? Limericks are that easy, and don't even have to contain the word 'Nantucket'. You too can enter this week, and even suggest topics. Plus, Bardflys Inc is extremely rib-tickled to announce that this week's spesh guest - Tues 10th - will be Jess Cook, the really talented brains-trust behind the better-than-excellent Token Word nights that happen monthly at the Knot Gallery. And if we're real lucky, the house band of "Raging" Nigel Date and Trevor "The Horn" Brown will bring back their buddy Tommy, who last week breezily proved he could sing the scales off a fish, or at least habit off a nun.

'But where and when is all this wonder being woven?' I hear you gasp. Why, Friend, it's Bardflys, at the Friend in Hand Hotel, 58 Cowper St Glebe, every Tues from 8.00ish, all for a stupendously piffling three bucks* (*We must be in Kansas!!)

the Good, the Bard and the Tugly

Tug Dumbly