As the norm of popular poetry these days shifts strongly in the direction of free-verse, I’ve been missing some good ol’ rhyme and meter.

So, this week I thought I would invite everyone to join me in having some fun with theme and structure.  I figured we could start with a round of limericks – they’re easy and entertaining, right?  If you need a refresher (or just like nit-picky specifications), a limerick is a five-line poem, often comical in nature, with an A/A/B/B/A rhyme scheme, and typically a 3/3/2/2/3-foot meter – every foot usually amphibrachic (short-STRESS-short), but sometimes anapestic (short-short-STRESS).

The theme for these limericks will be…mythological creatures.  Well-known or obscure, from any culture.

If you’d like to participate, just post your poem in the comments!  As a bit of incentive, I’ll give the author of the best one (in my very subjective opinion) a $10 USD Amazon credit (as regionally appropriate).

Buy a book, or…anything else.

Once more, simplified – write a limerick about a mythological creature, post it in the comments, and next week (November 3, 2012) the ‘winning’ contribution will get some Amazon money.

To start things off, I’ll leave you with a not-particularly-humorous example of my own:

A dragon lay siege to a castle
And said to himself, “What a hassle
To plunder unaided
And end up half-sated;
I ought to get myself a vassal.”

Bene scribete.