But I Wanna Tell Ya....

The next in a series of jokes that I've remembered for years and years.

I first heard this said by Wally Cox on "Hollywood Squares:"

There once was a man from Japan,
Whose poetry never did scan.
When told this was so,
the man said, "I know,
But I always try to fit as many words into the last line as I possibly can."

I've found two variations of this, though the changes are subtle:

There once was a man from Japan,
Whose limericks never did scan.
When asked why it was,
He said, "It's because
I always try to fit as many words in the last line as I possibly can."

And:

There was a young man of Japan
Whose limericks never would scan.
When they asked him, Why?
He said, with a sigh,
"It's because I always try to get as many words into the last line as I possibly can."

And while doing that research, I found this one:

A poet who lived in Peru,
wrote limericks that stopped at line two



Hmmm. Looking at this, 36 hours after writing it, I've always suspected I liked that "Japan" limerick because I struggle with "writing too much" (as anyone who's visited here can attest). One of the bromides that has haunted me in life is "Brevity is the soul of wit," and I've always wanted to achieve that balance where I can convey the most information in as concise a form as possible, and I suspect that's why, of all the limericks I looked at on the web, the one that caught my eye is the "Peru" one. Of course, it's truncated, but it does convey all the information it needs to. That's the joke.

Then I look at my career path. I started out writing in a forum that demands getting as much information into a limited time-frame (30 second and 60 second commercials) which I found frustrating, abandoned that, and went into a discipline where 70% of the job was editing.

Now, here I am, writing to my heart's content, and I find that I'm suffering, to carry the metaphor, from an enlarged heart. And I continue with the quest to write more, while writing less.

The punchline? If my last words are "Well, that's it."

Ba-dump-bump
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ALERT ALERT!

Next week, I'm going to do another week-long look at one song-writer's lyrics, but I've only got four of the five days covered. So, I'm taking requests--Anybody got a Leonard Cohen song they'd like put up? Better give me two, just in case I'm already using your suggestion (which I probably am).
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Meanwhile, this week another review--maybe two, a couple Netflix came in, a second batch of Spam-Poetry, and either something about the current state of comics criticism, or immigration, whichever crosses the finish line first.