If a blowfly flies
And a blowfly dies,
Does that blow- that once -flied
Turn into a blew?
Or a fly-that-has-blew?
Or a blew-that-has-fled?
Or does the fly just turn into a flew?
If a bee passes on
To where all bees go
Is it a bee-that-once-was
Or a was-that-will-bee?
Is it a bee-that's-no-more,
Or just a has-been,
Or a one-that-will-always-bee,
ineffably?
What makes a gnat a gnat?
And when are gnat's not?
Is there a gnattiest gnat,
Of the whole gnat lot?
Will the gnat world expire
In a gigantic gnaB giB?
What is it a gnat's got that a non-gnat don't got?
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16 comments:
Feel free to post your own insect poems in comments! There's a couple of them out there.
I don't do poetry - insect or otherwise. I shall just sit here and wait to be wowed by others.
I'm thinking more pre-existent insect poems - eg,
Big fleas have little fleas
On their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have smaller fleas -
And so on, ad infinitum.
- Jonathan Swift
Oh, Cliff
Sometimes it must be difficult not to feel as if
You really are a Cliff
That might have been written by a man named Rick who lived with a man called Vyvan and another man called Neil. He might also have written a poem that includes the line:
Felicity (Kendall) you fill me with electricity...
Along came a spider
The longer I spied her,
I see,
I see,
Not an insect she be,
Like a fly be like a bee,
Or an ant has likeance with a flea,
She has on each side of her body,
Legs numbering not three,
But indeed, a handsome four,
Which as I examined, came to the fore,
O cursed arachnid!
Look what ye did!
Oh NOW
OW OW
MORAL/PHILOSOPHY: Curiosity about arachnids and insects can be a beautiful but dangerous thing.
There was a redback on the toilet seat when I was there last night
I didn't see it in the dark but boy I felt its bite...
Then there's the ABC newsreader who is once reputed to have said,
"A woman was bitten on the funnel by a finger-webbed spider this morning..."
"Eric the Half a Bee", by Mr Monty Python
A one... two-
A one... two... three... four...
Half a bee, philosophically,
Must, ipso facto, half not be.
But half the bee has got to be
Vis a vis, its entity. D'you see?
But can a bee be said to be
Or not to be an entire bee
When half the bee is not a bee
Due to some ancient injury?
Singing...
La dee dee, one two three,
Eric the half a bee.
A B C D E F G,
Eric the half a bee.
Is this wretched demi-bee,
Half-asleep upon my knee,
Some freak from a menagerie?
No! It's Eric the half a bee!
Fiddle de dum, Fiddle de dee,
Eric the half a bee.
Ho ho ho, tee hee hee,
Eric the half a bee.
I love this hive, employee-ee,
Bisected accidentally,
One summer afternoon by me,
I love him carnally.
He loves him carnally,
Semi-carnally.
The end.
Cyril Connelly?
No; semi-carnally!
Oh.
Cyril Connelly.
[whistling]
Oops I forgot about Mike. I always forget about Mike when I really shouldn't considering the roller disco.
Along came a spider,
Elongated I spied her
A long game. Inspired her
Al, a gay my spies told a
*person to end this sequence Before it gets even more nonsensical than it started.*
MORAL: This is what happens when you are cramming for exams, folks. Don't let it happen to you. Don't study for your exams.
In my garden, doing a flower-watch, I was fascinated to see the daisies grow. An industrious bee was moving from blossom to blossom, presumably under orders from headquarters. One understands that bees are enormously good at communication.
This it was which prompted me to catch the bee and try to educate it still further. I used great kindness. Patience was also needed. I was aware all the while that I was entering realms where no one had been before. Although the bee worked hard, strong empathy developed between us: so much so that the bee, whom I christened Bea, would eat honey from my hand.
Once Bea had mastered the alphabet, she showed she was ready to tackle the masterpieces of English literature. She suggested we start with Leo Tolstoi's "War and Peace". I had to inform her - I trust without too much condescension - that this novel was in fact Russian, in origin if not in translation. She so immediately went off the idea that I suspected racial prejudice, rarely found in a bee, although she claimed never to have heard of Russia.
We finally settled on an English classic. Bea would read nothing less than Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice".
We settled down comfortably, one lovely summer evening, with the open book. I had chosen a paperback edition with good print. With the scrupulousness that was one of my trade marks, I had placed grains of sugar between each word, by way of encouragement.
Bea settled on the first page. She began a slow crawl over the first sentence. Rather to my disappointment, she insisted on working from right to left, Hebraic fashion. I wondered what she would make of it. "...in man single a that, acknowledged..."
These words were travelled in the first hour.
In the second hour, after a rest, we got only as far as "...universally truth a..."
Bea then rested. I felt that 'universally' had exhausted her. I could not help wondering how she would manage with 'possession' in the second line.
She indicated to me that she was extremely disappointed with the literary quality of the piece. I sympathised. We spent the rest of that evening watching television...
A flea and a fly in a flue
Were trapped, so what could they do?
Said the flea, 'Let us fly!'
Said the fly, 'Let us flee!'
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.
Oh, and also...
Look, I'll put it to you this way, in the hope you'll understand. Literature's okay, but what really grabs me is scuttling, right? Like, I mean, scuttling - here and there, anywhere I feel like.
Which is to say that directions are better than sentences. Any direction better than any sentence. Scuttle scuttle scuttle. Bliss.
Me and all my friends had been having this really great scuttle. Okay? A megascuttle, all round this apartment building in Prague. A moment's inattention and what happens?
- Jesus, I wake up and find myself transformed. Like lying in a BED, transformed into-. Look, I have to tell you. Into this huge pale human thing. Well - shit, into Franz Kafka. KAFKA. (That's his name. They have NAMES.)
It's very obvious, but Eric's ancestor and the subject of the granddaddy of all insect poems proves that there's more to insects than meets the eye. Indeed, one might suspect that an insect is at the heart of every psychosexual trauma. Dragonflies, on the other hand, just want to watch.
THE FLEA (Donne).
MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do.
O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.
Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.
Giggler, I, at parody wry
of matters insectisoid.
'Specially awork
Where tasks I shirk
And it's blogestry I should avoid.
But the antliest ants' antennae,
come beckoning over the veld,
Yes the wiggliest, giggliest,
Unstoppably wriggliest
Antennae trance me (though possibly maybe mispelled.)
It's a humid and humdrum old schoolday,
And the bellring's a whisker away,
But those matchsticky legs
Marching over the dregs
of a half-eaten pie start to sway:
to the anthem of Antliest Antics,
played by a beetle brass band,
calls the throng out to dance
and to enter a trance
butting little black heads
as our pardons we beg
with our twitchety witchety
wriggliest tickliest
radaring a-an-tennae - hurrah!
Noice, Mitzi, noice - you should perform that one.
There was an old man in a tree
Who was horribly bored by a wasp.
When asked, 'Does it buzz?'
He replied, 'No it doesn't -
I'm so glad it wasn't a hornet'
- W S Gilbert
I seen a dying butterfly,
Lying on the ground.
I picked it up and acctidentally squashed it's head.
Oh well, if would of [sic] died anyway.
- Dino (Kylie Mole's Boyfriend)
Dale - how could you forget the roller disco?!
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