Mark (unlike me) follows the Passover dietary rules. And now that the end’s in sight, he’s practically panting in anticipation of pizza and pasta.
Pasta Dreams (Limerick)
By Madeleine Begun Kane
My husband’s excitement is rising.
His mood’s leavened, which isn’t surprising.
Cuz Passover week
Is soon ending its streak;
Bread and pasta-decriminalizing.
Passing Over Some Rules (Limerick)
By Madeleine Begun Kane
Though I’m Jewish, I’m still eating bread
And refuse to munch matzo instead.
I spurn rules all the time,
Except canons of rhyme
And of meter … so don’t be misled.
May your seder be lovely,
A holiday treat.
May it not be too late
Till you finally eat.
Happy Passover to all who celebrate it!
First off, this limerick (despite its name) has nothing to do with macaroni. I’m not suffering from Passover pasta-withdrawal. Nor do my dreams (or nightmares) ever feature anything of a noodle nature.
So why the title? I just learned, from the delightfully informative Miss Rumphius, about the rare and usually comic form called macaronic verse. What the heck is macaronic verse? We’re told that it’s a usually absurd and nonsensical “poem in a mixture of two languages, one of them preferably Latin,” and that “the poet usually subjects one language to the grammatical laws of another to make people laugh.”
So naturally I had to try it, mixing legal terms (mostly Latin) in with standard limerick English:
Macaronic Limerick
By Madeleine Begun Kane
The corpus is AWOL. Oh my!
I attest that I left it hereby.
What a bona fide mess.
My mentis has stress.
It’s de facto I mortemed that fly.
(Linked at We Write Poems pairings prompt.)
Mad Kane (Madeleine Begun Kane) is a writer, musician, and "recovering lawyer." She won the Robert Benchley Society Award For Humor and enjoys writing limericks, song parodies, and current events haiku.
You can email her at madkane@madkane.com, visit her political humor blog, or stop by her home page.
