they must need bears

An author realized with a shudder
that her Gothic ship had lost its rudder.
Her composure thus shook
She exclaimed: "Stupid book!
Why can't you be more like your brudder?"

Her stories are hard to forget
And she gayed up some wolves with Monette
Her hard Sci-Fi chick
Proves you don't need a dick
Buy her books without doubt or regret!

Her breath escaped her body in a cone
of crystallizing fog. Her eyes grew wide
to realize she still lived -- without -- inside
the Enemy. Her symbiont alone
spread through her veins and married thought to bone,
a cobalt pulse repairing as she died.

Her sister - angel - lover? - never - caught
her arm, and birthed her back into the air
of Jacob's Ladder. Shorn of all her hair
and newly-winged, the sister said "You ought
not spit that out, that azure gift. We share
it with so few, so misbegot."

From Rule to Engine, crossing vacuum, vaulted
these two sisters, holding hands, Exalted.

A poet like Shakespeare I am not,
but dogg'rel I’ve always thought hot.
Both sides of ’03,
look alike to me.
Queen Liz and King Jamie both rot.

There once was a writer named Bear
Who lost her most favourite chair
To a presumptuous cat
And that is that
Cos to move cat, the Bear wouldn't dare

There once was a queen dressed in gold
Whose loins were incredibly cold
  Drake, Raleight & Burleigh
  Did find her quite surly
She died a virgin, quite old.

---

A bear wrote some books, so it's said
She liked to make sure they got read
  She'd hunt them all down
  With nary a frown
And encouraged one's reading in bed.

Edited at 2008-04-23 01:11 am (UTC)

A skillful young writer, named Bear
Specialized in vistas out there
Spacey or airy
or castles in Faerie
Smashing genres with barely a care.

I wrote this one about 13 years ago, after reading too many Shakespeare sonnets (is this possible?), but in particular Sonnet 130. I hope old work counts!

His Mistress Replies:

My poet’s pen is sharper than ten swords;
Methought true love should muffle unkind truth.
What right have you to mock me with these words?
For nor are you some godly-handsome youth!

‘Tis true I find your closing lines are sweet;
What woman would not wish to be called rare?
But wilful Will, admit that ‘tis not meet
To slight the colour of your lady’s hair!

Your style of loving sonnet is unique;
A compliment, you tell me, to my wit.
Still, ‘tis not pleasant to be told I ‘reek’;
Good Will, will you not flatter me a bit?

Yet my goodwill you have, for this is true:
Imperfect like meets like when I meet you.

There once was a writer named Bear
Whose TV show never did air
But that minor statistic
Did not stop Ballistic
Shadow Unit, the scripts are out there.

And did Faust's only begetter have time
Frizer's dagger buried deep 'bove his eye,
Could he reckon the long reach of the crime,
See the bard's due slip from him ere he die?
For Borges would trace English from Hengest
To our time not through him, new-dead shepherd,
But through that Stratford man, the populist,
Friendly rival, who now shone unobscured?

Did he see all the plays he'd never write
As his Cambridge wits were finally stilled?
And did he go gentler into that night
Knowing the tribute that to him was Will'd?
"Dead Shepherd, now I find thy saw of might:
'Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?'"


And it may be invalid because the last two lines are from As You Like It, but if I can claw back marks for including the author's name in the sonnet (Sean, unobscured), I'll take 'em...

Blood & Iron kept me up all through the night
Whiskey & Water’s still un-bought; times are tight!
Ink & Steel, I can feel
Will hold enough raw appeal
That Hell & Earth won’t keep Bear out of my sight

This isn't a sonnet because a) it doesn't rhyme and b) it's the start of what will probably never be a completed sequel to Doctor Faustus. (So far I have 65 lines and haven't worked out how to get the plot moving.) It also patently isn't a limerick, and thus is also not a contest entry. OTOH, it's kind of on-topic, so how could I resist the opportunity to show off share?

CLOWN So Faustus now is dead. God rest his soul,
If souls may slumber whither he's been ta'en
By Mephistophilis. His servant Wagner,
Ever puffed with pride for all the scraps
And bones of learning that his master toss'd him,
Now inherits all his cast-off wealth
And struts like a peacock through the town. And I,
I have thrice seven years been bound to serve
This thrice-damn'd vaunting Braggadocchio,
And three years more out of another term --
For, Laban-like, each term's no sooner done
Than he'll seek to renew it, promising
Of meat, and coin, and clothes, and such fine stuff,
And books to fill my head with curséd cunning.

Thou ‘mind'st me, Kit, of nothing more than autumn;
a grey November dull with sullen mists.
That vacuum secret month, when senses numb,
but yet this taboo spark for thee exists.
When in thy presence something overtakes me,
an acid etchéd line ‘twixt want and hate;
compulsion both to hex thee and to kiss thee,
to strike thee down and take thee to my mate.
Other hands than thine have made me harden,
other lips than thine have touched this skin,
so why should I attempt to seek thy pardon,
when other lips fulfil what you begin?
So sneer sweet Marlowe, on with this vendetta,
It only serves to make me love thee better.

Your words have come, down through the tolling years;
Cast out to time by those who call'd you friend.
Each age, new-lit, a diff'rent story hears,
Yet still your words drive to a constant end.
How can we know the man who hid from sight?
Old faith, perhaps? Or Pop Star of his age?
The house you buy, less than the plays you write,
But loaded with new rumours for the sage.
In school, they lie, they hide away your life.
Your words they gut, dole out as lumps of lead;
No sonnet to a boy, no bed left to a wife,
Unless the words take root in some new head,
A new life blooms, drawn from your prose and rhyme,
You were not of an age, but for all time.

There once was an author named Bear
whose word count was usually hrair
It's a good bet
There's more than just het
In her next work: featuring Muire.

There once was a poet called Will
Whose pen would never stay still.
He wrote of those things
That catch the conscience of kings
And make school English a pill.

(Yeah, I just finished reading Hamlet, which, I should point out, I enjoyed now that I'm old enough to really appreciate it.)

Damn! I'm better at haiku!

Since as we know, art is not life -- except
As polished and refractory small shards
Chipped from a mirror -- why have scholars kept
Sifting through dusty muniment discards
For Will's Dark Lady? Immortality,
Perhaps? -- the hope of a footnote's triumph winding
Through future textbooks? Or a gossipy
Delight at exposing others, at finding
Out secrets? As it is, their ink clouds our sight,
Leaving, squidlike, Shakespeare the Man obscured,
A life quest for some errant Arthur's knight --
And even with that Grail, her name, we'd learn
No truth that we cannot already discern
Within the silver cup of Will's own word.

---L.

An inward glance has seen your soul inside my own--
This burning thing has made my darkness very clear
A terrifying thing, my being unalone--
I cannot tell if this, in me, is joy or fear.
For we have stepped beyond the standard wire
Into some new and alien regime;
And lest insanity bring down more fire
I must retreat from seeing all it seems.
--But if we reach what further minds there are
Then there's no fear in hearing what they say;
Let mind with mind be mingled in our star,
And us dispense with pain, and be away.
For how could my heart be beautiful, without such light?
And how your star be known, without my frame of night?

.
.
...Ok, personally -- I think my sonnet sucks. But that's what I came up with, so there you go.

Does the phrasing "an original sonnet or an original limerick" preclude mulitple entries?

---L.

"Now 1608, If You Cast Your Minds Back, Was a Very Bad Year for the Theater"

The task: you have a time machine that's stuck --
It jumps four centuries exactly: who
To rescue from Jacobian marl and muck
To poetize for us? Whose death undo?
Will Shakespeare's lines are getting crabbed by then;
Ben Jonson was, now, barely getting going;
There's Beaumont/Fletcher -- but they're boring men --
Or Middleton, or Dekker -- both weak showing;
Sidney and Spencer are Right Out -- both quite dead
As Kit (who'd soon as knife you as perform);
There's Daniel, with his virtues (here I "meh"ed),
And Drayton's lack of vice (and I'm lukewarm).
So none of these will do -- yet here's the one:
'Tis by John Donne our verse today's undone.

---L.

Enthralled with the musings of Bear
we endeavor to leech from her flair;
alas, when we read
her livejournal feed
we find that her cat rules the lair!

There once was a horse—-Oh! A Kelpie!
With feathers and teeth and—-god help me,
His white back was broad,
And his black shoulders strong.
Who can blame me for wanting to ride-—eeee!

Oh, man. You make me wish I was capable of any small feat of poetical prowess. Sadly, I'm not. :D Good luck, contestants!

My local bookstore makes me swear
The customers all have blank stares
I look at the shelves
And I say to myself
Of course, They Must Need Bears!

I'll give it a try.

Once Jenny Casey was a pawn
Known for her cybernetic brawn
She went into space
Aliens she faced
Efforts ushered a new age dawn

There once was a playwright called Kit,
Whose rep has since suffered a bit,
But a literary Bear's
Made a few quick repairs
And now he's the devil's own poet.