Nonsense verse

Prayer Before Meat (with apologies to Robert Burns)

Some hae meat that cannae eat,
An some hae none that hunger;
How come it's cawed a butcher's shop
An no a mammalmonger?

The Zombie

The zombie’s goal or raisin d’etre
Is chewing eyeballs, brains, et cetera,
And he pursues this avocation
With the gravest dedication.
He feels no boredom or malaise,
Takes no sick leave or holidays;
He doesn’t shirk, or skive, or stall;
He’s an example to us all!
Why in the world can’t everywombie
As industrious as the zombie?

The Samurai

The samurai (or ninja)
Isn’t showy with his violence;
He prefers to kill and injure
With precision, and in silence.
If you’ve locked your bedroom door, he can
Still effortlessly kick it
In, and off you with a shuriken
Before you’ve time to brick it.
The ninja (or the samurai)’s
An omnipresent danger,
And society shouldn’t glamorise
This tall, dark, deadly stranger.

The IBM Keyboard

The IBM Model M keyboard
Was a sturdy, formidable beast;
It was big, it was proud, it was fearfully loud
And it weight half a stone at the least.

The IBM Model M keyboard
Quickly came to be loved and renowned;
It achieved worldwide fame
for its steel-strengthened frame
And its wonderful clickety sound!

The IBM Model M keyboard
Was designed in 1984;
And it rolled off the line until mid-’89,
But they don’t roll them out any more.

IBM closed their plant at Kentucky,
And they shut down the warehouses there,
And the joyous k’ching!s of the buckling springs
Never more filled the factory air.

Now we’re all using cheap modern keyboards
With some flimsy dome contacts inside;
Our faces are bleak, and our typing is weak,
Our atrophied hands RSI’d.

And they break on a slight spill of coffee,
And we long for a keyboard that works,
And we barely remember the poor Model M,
And that’s what they call progress, the jerks.

The Tiger (with apologies to William Blake)

Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright
(Not sure if I spelled that right);
What immortal hand or eye
Could fashion such a stripy guy?

What the hammer that hath hewn it
Into such a chonky unit?
Did who made the lamb make thee,
Or an external franchisee?

What the bolt or screw or nail
That attached thy swishy tail?
What the anvil? What the bellows?
Where were wrought you floofy fellows?

Where was bought the tube of glue
With which your fur was stuck to you?
In what distant deeps or skies
Are sold such art and craft supplies?

What great Artisan of myth—
What frightful black-and-orange-smith—
Dared forge a beast so fierce and hungry?
What a feat of mammalmongery!