Rusty Saber: Limerick writers rise to challenge

Strike up the band! Winners of the "Rusty Saber Sort-of-Annual Limerick Contest," aka Rusty Limericks, are about to become published poets! All are fine limerick writers and adhere to the "three R's." Translation: They are Regular Rusty Readers.

Without further ado (drum roll, please) the Rusty Saber limerick winners! Since so many of the entries could be the best, I wimped out and declared those included below as worthy of being published, hence they are winners. Fasten your seat belts! Away we go!

Richard Lands, Springfield, submitted a single winning limerick on a favorite Rusty Saber topic, Springfield drivers:

Drivers here can be so atrocious

They're best taken in small doses;

Merging in from the turn lane

They give me such neck pain,

That road rage makes me ferocious.

From L. Dwight Petete, Camdenton, came two fine entries:

Just passing through life while wishin'

To come out other side in mint condition,

A hard lesson to learn

which bridge to cross or burn

or simply to stop and go fishin'.

While standing in line at the store,

I glanced toward the autoswing door.

While trying to enter,

his face he did splinter

the sign "broken door" on the floor.

Arthur R. Trampler, marketing director for managed care organization CCO Inc., wrote this winner, which he calls a "medical limerick," while trying to find a urologist for a patient in Cape Girardeau:

If you've bumps on your head, a phrenologist.

If you think they're inside, a neurologist.

But if you're a man with a pain,

and you think it's in your brain,

my wife says you'll need a urologist.

Other poet Trampler entries, any of which could be winners, poke fun at the "clean limerick" rule.

A base limerick avoiding things naughty,

when composed for the morally haughty

may still be offensive

to the grammatically pensive,

though the words that are used are not bawdy.

A limerick may be base poetry,

disdained by those given to snobbery.

Yet it is the best style

to expose with a smile

our foibles to sardonic scrutiny.

Space doesn't allow including others of poet Trampler's excellent entries. The same is true of entries sent in by Steve Rice, Springfield. His limericks were used by him as emcee of the Missouri Optometric Association Presidential banquet. Now, get this: Poet Rice creatively introduced those at the head table by using limericks; that's my kind of creativity. We can't meet all the head table guests, but here are a few.

Over this ceremony I am to master,

like a pastor, except maybe a little faster.

My big hope tonight

is that I get it right,

and keep the banquet free from disaster.

I'm sure that it's plain for you to see

I've brought a lovely lady with me;

Karen is her name

and she's quite the dame.

Because of her I live life happily.

There they are, your distinguished head table,

a group that is now willing and able.

To stop this nonsense,

that's at their expense.

Sure hope that the food is more palatable.

There they are, the best of the 2000 Rusty Limericks. Many thanks to newly published poets Richard Lands, L. Dwight Petete, Arthur R. Trampler and Steve Rice.

(Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University and a Springfield public relations consultant.)