What’s Your Favorite Limerick?

3 thoughts on “What’s Your Favorite Limerick?”

1. I work in the political sphere on tenant rights, affordable housing, and homelessness prevention issues. Several years ago I was working on an issue called the Renters Credit (i.e., property tax relief for Minnesota renters). I really needed two legislators to contact the Governor to ask for his support on the issue—rather than vocal opposition. Several tactics did not work out to get the legislators to do what we needed.

   And so my colleagues and I did some brainstorming. We came up with a very unorthodox way to make the request. We got a huge poster-size sheet of thick paper and folded it into a card shape. On the front, we drew stick figures, and cut out and pasted large-sized pictures of the legislators’ faces and wrote “Minnesota Renters Need the Renters Credit.” On the inside we got scores renter-constituents to write the names down supporting our request.

   We, then, wrote this limerick:

   “There once were two suburban lawmakers,
   Who could be movers and shakers.
   Will they talk to the Gov?
   The Renters Credit needs love.
   Not to do it would be a mistakers!”

   The two legislators wrote letters to the Governor asking for his support.

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2. My favorite breaks a couple of the unwritten rules of limericks, but it is so clever that I simply don’t care.

   A flea and a fly in a flue
   Were trapped, so what could they do?
   Let us fly, said the flea
   Said the fly, let us flee
   So they flew through a flaw in the flue

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3. I always liked:
   There was a young lady from Niger,
   Who smiled as she rode on a tiger.
   They returned from the ride
   With the lady inside
   And the smile on the face of the tiger.

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