PS Cottier

Limericks are meant to be obscene, or at the very least, scurrilous.  The strong ‘message’ and the clunky rhyme pattern make them a very particular form of poetry.  One could not, I think, write a moving or sensitive limerick; that’s a different KOF, to be poured into a sonnet or free verse.

But where the expressed views of a public figure seem crude and somehow thoughtless, the limerick is the best form of poetry there is.  Here’s one about the current Leader of the Opposition in Australia, Mr Tony Abbott, whose political position on climate change seems to be entirely based on crude populism.  (Not that Julia Gillard’s government is a shining example of The Mind Made Flesh, but still…)

And I promise not to do the limerick thing again for a while.  Please excuse double spacing; for some reason my computer ‘does this’ sometimes, and won’t listen to reason.  Which actually seems appropriate for this little poem‘s subject.

My budgie slipped out...

There once was a leader called Abbott

who criticised just as a habit.

The climate did fry

and he couldn’t say why

which bemused this nay-saying maggot.

P.S. Cottier