Poetry: Special Crocodile Edition

How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!

-- Lewis Carroll

Comments

[rilkefan]

A lyric from Tennyson's _The Princess_:

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a summering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remember'd kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!

[rilkefan]

This might as well be poetry:

[...]

One fine morning in the middle of the Precession of the Equinoxes this 'satiable Elephant's Child asked a new fine question that he had never asked before. He asked, 'What does the Crocodile have for dinner?' Then everybody said, 'Hush!' in a loud and dretful tone, and they spanked him immediately and directly, without stopping, for a long time.

By and by, when that was finished, he came upon Kolokolo Bird sitting in the middle of a wait-a-bit thorn-bush, and he said, 'My father has spanked me, and my mother has spanked me; all my aunts and uncles have spanked me for my 'satiable curtiosity; and still I want to know what the Crocodile has for dinner!'

Then Kolokolo Bird said, with a mournful cry, 'Go to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, and find out.'

[...]

Then the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake scuffled down from the bank and said, 'My young friend, if you do not now, immediately and instantly, pull as hard as ever you can, it is my opinion that your acquaintance in the large-pattern leather ulster' (and by this he meant the Crocodile) 'will jerk you into yonder limpid stream before you can say Jack Robinson.'

[...]

Then the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake came down from the bank, and knotted himself in a double-clove-hitch round the Elephant's Child's hind legs, and said, 'Rash and inexperienced traveller, we will now seriously devote ourselves to a little high tension, because if we do not, it is my impression that yonder self-propelling man-of-war with the armour-plated upper deck' (and by this, O Best Beloved, he meant the Crocodile), 'will permanently vitiate your future career.'

That is the way all Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snakes always talk.

[...]

There's a wonderful reading of this by Bruce Willis of all people, greatly aided by background sounds by Bobby McFerrin.

[Andrew Frederiksen]

I shoot the Hippopotamus
With bullets made of platinum
Because if I use leaden ones
His hide is sure to flatten 'em.

-- H. Belloc.

[Jesurgislac]

On the Ning Nang Nong

Spike Milligan

On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all say BOO!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So its Ning Nang Nong
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning
Trees go ping
Nong Ning Nang
The mice go Clang
What a noisy place to belong
is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!

[st]

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the eco-tourist
that was in
the river

and whom
you were probably
relying upon
to pay your guide fees.

Forgive me
he was delicious
so crunchy
and screamy.

-- Obviously Not William Carlos Williams

[Edward]

so crunchy
and screamy.

That is genius!

e

[Bernard Yomtov]

I give you now Professor Twist
A conscientious scientist
Camped on a tropic riverside,
One day he missed his loving bride.

She had, the guide informed him later
Been eaten by an alligator.
Professor Twist could not but smile
You mean, he said, a crocodile.

--Ogden Nash

[hilzoy]

st: what Edward said. I have read many parodies of that poem, and I think yours is absolutely the best.

(Screamy. Tee hee.)

[Edward]

what was the original, plums?

[hilzoy]

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

[Edward]

that's right...

heh..."screamy"

that just makes me smile.

[rilkefan]

via whoever this is:

I am writing these poems
From inside a lion,
And it's rather dark in here.
So please excuse the handwriting
Which may not be too clear.
But this afternoon by the lion's cage
I'm afraid I got too near.
And I'm writing these lines
From inside a lion,
And it's rather dark in here.

--- Shel Silverstein

[Dantheman]

From Ogden Nash (by memory):

The Wombat

The wombat lives among the trees
Amid the Far Antipodes.
It may exist on nuts and berries
Or, then again, on missionaries.
Its distant habitat precludes
Conclusive knowledge of its moods.
So I would not engage the wombat
In any form of mortal combat.

[Bernard Yomtov]

In honor of Social Security privatization:

"A Hero in the Land of Dough"

Another nickel in the slot
And you will hit the lucky dot
Down wil pour the great jackpot

Up the avenue you'll go
A hero in the land of dough
Ticker tape will fall like snow

You will be the lucky one
Lolling in the summer sun
Watching lucky horses run

Watching lucky numbers spin
You will be the next to win
Put another nickel in

--Robert Clairmont

[ral]

The Wuggly Ump

Sing tirraloo, sing tirralay,
The Wuggly Ump lives far away.

It eats umbrellas, gunny sacks,
Brass doorknobs, mud, and carpet tacks.

How most unpleasing, to be sure!
Its other habits are obscure.

Sing jigglepin, sing jogglepen,
The Wuggly Ump has left its den.

We pass our happy childhood hours
In weaving endless chains of flowers.

Across the hills the Wuggly Ump
Is hurtling on, kerbash, kerblump!

When play is over, we are fed
On wholesome bowls of milk and bread.

Sing hushaboo, sing hushaby.
The Wuggly Ump is drawing nigh.

The moon is full: its silver beams
Shine down and give us lovely dreams.

Sing twiddle-ear, sing twaddle-or,
The Wuggly Ump is at the door.

What nastly little wilful eyes
For anything of such a size!

How uninviting are its claws!
How even more so are its jaws!

Sing glogalimp, sing glugalump,
From deep inside the Wuggly Ump.

-- Edward Gorey

[I don't know why I didn't think of this before.]

[Requiem Belle the Crusader]

There is a poem mentioning the Limpopo. It was referenced in Matilda by Roald Dahl, which I read years and years and years ago. The name of said poem has slipped my mind, and so have all the words. It made little to no sense, and began with "on the greasy grimy banks of the Limpopo river," or something very close to that.

Anyway, that was off topic.

I can't off the top of my head think of any crocodile poetry that hasn't already been mentioned, but If I may, I shall relate an interesting crocodile tail...er, tale.

I heard this story while visiting a crocodile ranch in Australia.

There was a pair of crocodiles, a male and a female, that were notorious for charging the fence that kept them penned and escaping. They were always caught without incident. One time, there was this international backpacking tour, and en route to some good hiking in the outback, they took a tour of the croc ranch in question. Well, This German chick and her Czechloslovakian boyfriend wandered away from the tour to be 'alone', and hen it was discovered they were missing, the group retraced their steps and found the pair's footprints in the dusty trail veering away from where the group was headed, and straight for the habitat of the two notorious crocs. As bad luck would have it, the crocs were rather stationary when they were found, a telltale sign of being very well fed. The owners of the ranch decided it was time to kill the offending crocs, and when they did, they opened them up like sharks to check the stomach contents for the backpackers. They opened the female crocodile first and found the reamains of the German woman, and so, one Aussie turned to the other and said, "well, the Czech's (pron: check's) in the male (mail)!"

That is my shaggy dog joke about crocodiles.

[floogle]

i have no more to say...this is a smockery of a sham
how very dare you