My Virtual Reading Room

"The Cat" by Ogden Nash

You get a wife, you get a house,
Eventually you get a mouse.
You get some words regarding mice,
You get a kitty in a trice.

By two a.m. or thereabouts,
The mouse is in, the cat is out.
It dawns upon you, in your cot,
The mouse is silent, the cat is not.

Instead of kitty, says your spouse,
You should have got another mouse.

Сперва заводим мы жену и дом,
А мышь сама заводится потом.
Потом жена заводит в свой черёд
Речь о мышах и что, мол, нужен кот.

Заводим и кота. Узнав о том,
Мышь притихает и дрожит хвостом.
Зато как заведенный скачет кот
Всю ночь, пока не кончится завод.

Ничем котяру не угомонишь.
Уж лучше б я купил вторую мышь!

or

Look, Ma, what I got!
            ~~~~~~

The more I leaf through the dictionary in my physician's waiting room the more my ego grows;
I feel rather like the man who was delighted to find that all his life he had been speaking prose,
Because I discover that my modest minor ailments,
Why, when expressed in scientific terminology, they are major physical derailments.

What I thought were merely little old mumps and measles turn out to have been parotitis and rubella,
And chicken pox, that's for the birds, have I told you about my impressive varicella?
I apologize for my past solecisms, which were heinous,
Never again shall I mention flat feet or bunions when referring to the hallus valgus or my pes planus.

It projects me into a state of hypnosis
To reflect that a watched pot never boils, it furunculosis.
Once my internal rumblings at parties caused me to wish I could shrink to nothing, or at least a pygmy,
But now I proudly inquire, Can everybody hear my borborygmi?

My one ambition is to become as rich as Croesus.
So that instead of this bourgeois backache I can afford some spondylolisthesis,
Although then I suppose I would look back on my impecunious days with acute nostalgia
Because my headaches would also have progressed from rags to riches, or from Horatio Alger to cephalalgia.

I have certainly increased my learning by more than a smidgin,
Now I know that that specifically projecting Hollywood starlet is not a squab, she's a steatopigeon.
Indeed, I know so much that it would be truly tragic were I to be afflicted with aphasia,
And if you can't swallow that statement it is my diagnosis that you are suffering from achalasia.

(Ogden Nash)

The Strange Case of the Lovelorn Letter Writer

Dear Miss Dix, I am a young lady of Scandinavian origin, and I am in a quandary.
I am not exactly broody, but I am kind of pondery.
I got a twenty-five waist and a thirty-five bust,
And I am going with a chap whose folks are very uppercrust.
He is the intellectual type, which I wouldn't want to disparage,
Because I understand they often ripen into love after marriage,
But here I am all set
For dalliance,
And what do I get?
Shilly-shalliance.

Just when I think he's going to disrobe me with his eyes,
He gets up off of the davenport and sighs.
Every time I let down my hair,
He starts talking to himself or the little man who isn't there.
Every time he ought to be worrying about me,
Why, he's worrying about his mother, that's my mother-in-law to be,
And I say let's burn that bridge when we come to it, and he says don't I have any sin sense,
His uncle and her live in incense.

Well, with me that's fine,
Let them go to their church and I'll go to mine.
But no, that's not good enough for Mr. Conscience and his mental indigestion,
He's got to find two answers for every question.
If a man is a man, a girl to him is a girl, if I correctly rememma,
But to him I am just a high pathetical dilemma.

What I love him in spite of
A girl wants a fellow to go straight ahead like a locomotive and he is more like a loco-might-of.
Dear Miss Dix, I surely need your advice and solace.
It's like I was in love with Henry Wallace.
Well, while I eagerly await your reply I'm going down to the river to pick flowers.  I'll get some rosemary if I can't find a camellia.

Yours truly, Ophelia.

(Ogden Nash)

Riding On A Railroad Train

Some people like to hitch and hike;
They are fond of highway travel;
Their nostrils toil through gas and oil,
They choke on dust and gravel.
Unless they stop for the traffic cop
Their road is a fine-or-jail road,
But wise old I go rocketing by;
I'm riding on the railroad.

( Read more... )

A Drink With Something In It

There is something about a Martini,
A tingle remarkably pleasant;
A yellow, a mellow Martini,
I wish that I had one at present.
There is something about a Martini,
Ere the dining and dancing begin,
And to tell you the truth,
It is not the vermouth--
I think that perhaps it's the gin.

( Read more... )

YOU CAN BE A REPUBLICAN, I'M A GENOCRAT

Oh, "rorty" was a mid-Victorian word
Which meant, "fine, splendid, jolly"
And often to me it has reoccurred
In moments melancholy.
For instance, children, I think it's rorty
To be with people over forty.

I can't say which, come eventide,
More tedious I find;
Competing with the juvenile stride,
Or meeting the juvenile mind.
So I think it rorty, yes, and nifty,
To be with people over fifty.

The pidgin talk the youthful use
Bypasses conversation.
I can't believe the code they choose
Is a means of communication.
Oh to be with people over sixty
Despite their tendency to prolixty!

The hours a working parent keeps
Mean less than Latin to them,
Wherefore they disappear in jeeps
Till three and four A.M.
Oh, to be with people you pour a cup for
Instead of people you have to wait up for!

I've tried to read young mumbling lips
Till I've developed a slant-eye,
And my hearing fails at the constant wails
Of, If I can't, why can't I?
Oh, to be beside a septuagenarian,
Silent upon a peak in Darien!

They don't know Hagen from Bobby Jones,
They never heard Al Smith,
Even Red Grange is beyond their range,
And Dempsey is a myth.
Oh golly, to gabble upon the shoulder
Of someone my own age, or even older!

I'm tired of defining hadn't oughts
To opposition mulish,
The thoughts of youth are long long thoughts,
And Jingo! Aren't they foolish!
All which is why, in case you've wondered
I'd like a companion aged one hundred.

(Ogden Nash)

IS THERE AN OCULIST IN THE HOUSE?

How often I would that I were one of those homely philosophical old codgers
Like, say, Mr. Dooley or Will Rogers,
Because I could then homelily call people's attention to the fact that we didn't see eye to eye with the Italians so we had a war with them,
after which, to put it succinkly
We and the Italians became as close as Goodson and Todman or Huntley and Brinkley,
And we didn't see eye to eye with the Germans and we had to either fight or bootlick,
So we fought, and now everything between us and the Germans is gemutlich,
And the Japanese didn't see eye to eye with us, so they fought us the soonest,
And today we and the Japanese are of companions the boonest.
Now at the daily boasts of  "My retaliation can lick your retaliation" I am with apprehension stricken,
As one who watches two adolescent hot-rodders careening headlong toward each other, each determined to die rather than chicken.
Once again there is someone we don't see eye to eye with, and maybe I couldn't be dafter,
But I keep wondering if this time we couldn't settle our differences before a war instead of after.

(Ogden Nash)

ANY MILLENNIUMS TODAY, LADY?

As I was wandering down the street
With nothing in my head,
A sign in a window spoke to me
And this is what it said:

"Are your pillows a pain in the neck?
Are they lumpy, hard, or torn?
Are they full of old influenza germs?
Are the feathers thin and forlorn?
Bring 'em to us,
We do the trick;

Re-puff,
Replenish,
Re-curl,
Re-tick,
We return your pillows, spanned-and-spicked,
Re-puffed, replenished, re-curled, re-ticked."

As I was wandering down the street
With too much in my head,
The sign became a burning bush,
And this is what it said:

"Is the world a pain in the neck?
Is it lumpy, hard, or torn?
Is it full of ancestral germs
That were old before you were born?
Bring it to us,
We do the trick,
Re-puff,
Replenish,
Re-curl,
Re-tick,
In twenty-four hours we return the world
Re-puffed, replenished, re-ticked, re-curled."

As I was wandering down the street
I heard the trumpets clearly,
But when I faced the sign again
It spoke of pillows merely.
The world remains a derelict,
Unpuffed, unplenished, uncurled, unticked.

(Ogden Nash)

This seemed appropriate to the season :)

Enjoy,
Cat

UNDER THE FLOOR

Everybody knows how the waters come down at Lodore,
But what about voices coming up through the floor?
Oh yes, every time that into a task you set your teeth
Something starts talking in the room underneath,
And no matter how many authorities you quiz,
You can never find out who or what it is;
You know one thing about it and nothing more,
That it is just something that goes around making noises that come up through the floor.

Sometimes it sings the Indian Love Call and sometimes it sings Lead, Kindly Light, by Cardinal Newman,
But even then it doesn't sound human,
And sometimes it gobbles,
And the sound wibbles and wobbles,
And sometimes it snarls like a ghoul interrupted at its unholy feast,
And sometimes it just mutters like the blood going down the drain of a tub after a murderer has finished dismembering the deceased;

It cackles, it crackles, it drones, it buzzes, it chortles,
It utters words but in no tongue spoken by mortals,
Yes, its language is a mystery for evermore,
The language of whatever it is that makes the noise that comes up through the floor,
And you shiver and quiver and wonder,
What's under?

Is it banshees or goblins or leprechauns, or trolls or something?
Or pixies or vampires of lost souls or something?
What is it below?
Better not, better not know.
Don't let it upset you,
But also don't overlook the possibility that someday whatever it is that makes the noises that come up through the floor may come up through the floor and get you.

(Ogden Nash)

MS. FOUND UNDER A SERVIETTE IN A LOVELY HOME

Our outlook is totally different from that of our American cousins, who have never had an aristocracy.  Americans relate all effort, all work, and all of life itself to the dollar.  Their talk is of nothing but dollars.  The English seldom sit happily chatting for hours on end about pounds.

(Nancy Mittford in Noblesse Oblige)

Dear Cousin Nancy:

You probably never heard of me or Cousin Beauregard or Cousin Yancey,
But since you're claiming kin all the way across the ocean, we figure you must be at least partwise Southern,
So we consider you not only our kith and kin but also our kithin' couthern.

I want to tell you, when cousin Emmy Lou showed us your piece it stopped the conversation flat,
Because I had twenty dollars I wanted to talk about, and Cousin Beauregard had ten dollars he wanted to talk about, and Cousin Yancey didn't have any dollars at all, and he wanted to talk about that.
But Cousin Emmy Lou looked over her spectacles, which the common people call glasses,
And she offered us a dollar to stop talking about dollars and start talking about the English upper classes.

Cousin Beauregard wanted to know why the English aristocracy was called English when most of their names were French to begin with,
And now anybody with an English name like Hobbs or Stobbs has to accumulate several million of those pounds they seldom chat about, to buy his way in with.
Cousin Yancey said he could understand that--the St. Aubyns beat the hell out of Hobbses in 1066--but there was a more important point that he could not determine,
Which is why the really aristocratic English aristocrats have names that are translated from the German.

Cousin Emmy Lou is pretty aristocratic herself; in spite of her weakness for hog jowl and potlikker, she is noted for her highborn pale and wan flesh,
And where most people get gooseflesh she gets swan flesh,
And she said she thought you ought to know that she had been over the royal roster
And she had spotted at least one impostor.

She noticed that the Wicked Queen said "Mirror, mirror on the wall" instead of  "Looking glass, looking glass on the wall," which is perfectly true,
So the Wicked Queen exposed herself as not only wicked but definitely non-U,
After that, we loosened our collars
And resumed our conversation about dollars.

(Ogden Nash)

PEEKABOO, I ALMOST SEE YOU

Middle-aged life is merry, and I love to lead it,
But there comes a day when your eyes are all right but your arm isn't long enough to hold the telephone book where you can read it,
And your friends are jocular, so you go to the oculist,
And of all your friends he is the joculist,
So over his facetiousness let us skim,
Only noting that he has been waiting for you ever since you said Good evening to his grandfather clock under the impression that it was him,
And you look at his chart and it says SHRDLU QWERTYOP, and you say Well, why SHRDNTLU QWERTYOP? and he says one set of glasses won't do.

You need two.
One for reading Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason and Keats's "Endymion" with,
And the other for walking around without saying Hello to strange wymion with.
So you spend your time taking off your seeing glasses to put on your reading glasses, and then remembering that your reading glasses are upstairs or in the car,
And then you can't find your seeing glasses again because without them on you can't see where they are.

Enough of such mishaps, they would try the patience of an ox,
I prefer to forget both pairs of glasses and pass my declining years saluting strange women and grandfather clocks.

(Ogden Nash)

TWO AND ONE ARE A PROBLEM

Dear Miss Dix, I am a young man of half-past thirty-seven.
My friends say I am not unattractive, though to be kind and true is what I have always striven.
I am open-minded about beverages so long as they are grape, brandy or malt,
And I am generous to practically any fault.

Well Miss Dix not to beat around the bush, there is a certain someone who thinks I am pretty nice,
And I turn to you for advice.
You see, it started when I was away on the road
And returned to find a pair of lovebirds had taken up their residence in my abode.

Well I am not crazy about lovebirds, but I must say they looked very sweet in their gilded cage,
And their friendship had reached an advanced stage,
And I had just forgiven her who of the feathered fiances was the donor of
When the children caught a lost lovebird in the yard that we couldn't locate the owner of.

So then we had three, and it was no time for flippancy,
Because everybody knows that a lovebird without its own lovebird to love will pine away and die of the discrepancy,
So we bought a fourth lovebird for the third lovebird and they sat around very cozily beak to beak
And then the third lovebird that we had provided the fourth lovebird for to keep it from dying died at the end of the week,

So we were left with an odd lovebird and it was no time for flippancy,
Because a lovebird without its own lovebird to love will pine away and die of the discrepancy,
So we had to buy a fifth lovebird to console the fourth lovebird that we had bought to keep the third lovebird contented,
And now the fourth lovebird has lost its appetite, and Miss Dix, I am going demented.

I don't want to break any hearts, but I got to know where I'm at;
Must I keep on buying lovebirds, Miss Dix, or do you think it would be all right to buy a cat?

(Ogden Nash)

SONG FOR A TEMPERATURE OF A HUNDRED AND ONE

Of all God's creatures give me man
For impractical uniqueness,
He's hardly tenth when it comes to strenth,
But he leads the field in weakness.
Distemper suits the ailing dog,
The chicken's content with pip,
But the human race, which sets the pace,
Takes nothing less than Grippe.

THEN, hey for the grippe, for the goodly la grippe!
In dogs it's distemper, in chickens, it's pip;
But the lords of creation insist at the least
On the germ that distinguishes man from the beast.

The mule with mange is satisfied,
They tell me in the South;
And the best-bred cows with drowse and browse,
Content with hoof-and-mouth;
Bubonic cheers the humble rat
As he stealthily leaves the ship;
When the horse gets botts he thinks it's lots,
But people hold out for grippe.

THEN, hey for the grippe, for the goodly la grippe,
For the frog in the throat and the chap on the lip;
For the ice on the feet and the fire on the brow,
And the bronchial tubes that moo like a cow.

And hey for the ache in the back of the legs,
And the diet of consomme, water and eggs,
For the mustard which sits on your chest like a cactus,
For the doctor you're kindly providing with practus;
And hey for the pants of which you're so fond,
And the first happy day they're allowed to be donned;

For the first day at work, all bundled in wraps,
And last but not least, for the splendid relapse.
So let man meet his Maker, a smile on his lip,
Singing hey, double hey, for the goodly la grippe.

(Ogden Nash)

So Thomas Edison
Never drank his medicine;
So Blackstone and Hoyle
Refused cod-liver oil;
So Sir Thomas Malory
Never heard of a calory;
So the Earl of Lennos
Murdered Rizzio without the aid of vitamins or calisthenos;
So Socrates and Plato
Ate dessert without finishing their potato;
So spinach was too spinachy
For Leonardo da Vinaci;
Well, it's all immaterial,
So eat your nice cereal,
And if you want to name your own ration,
First go get a reputation.

(Ogden Nash)

Hi everyone,

I think we could all use a laugh...:)

Enjoy,
Cat

Mr. Barcalow's Breakdown

I MUST TELL YOU ABOUT MY NOVEL

My grandpa wasn't salty,
No hero he of fable,
His English wasn't faulty,
He wore a coat at table.
His character lacked the color
Of either saint or satyr,
His life was rather duller
Than that of Walter Pater.

Look at Grandpa, take a look!
How can I write a book!
( Rest here for length: )

THE LLAMA

The one-l lama,
He's a priest.
The two-l llama,
He's a beast.
And I'll bet my silk pajama
There isn't any three-l lama.

(Ogden Nash)

LINES TO BE SCRIBBLED ON SOMEBODY ELSE'S THIRTIETH MILESTONE

Thirty today?  Cheer up, my lad!
The good old thirties aren't so bad.
Life doesn't end at twenty-nine,
So come on in, the water's fine.

I, too, when thirty crossed my path,
Turned ugly colors with shame and wrath.
I kicked, I scratched, I bit my nails,
I indulged in tantrums the size of whales,

I found it hard to forgive my mater
For not having had me ten years later.
I struggled with reluctant feet
Where dotage and abdomens meet.

Like the tongue that seeks the missing tooth
I yearned for my extracted youth.
Since then some years have ambled by
And who so satisfied as I.

The thirties are things I wallow among,
With naught but pity for the young.
The less long ago that people were born
The more I gaze on them with scorn,

And each Thanksgiving I Thanksgive
That I'm slowly learning how to live.
So conquer, boy, your grief and rage,
And welcome to the perfect age!

I hope good fairies your footsteps haunt,
And bring you everything you want,
From cowboy suits and Boy Scout knives,
To beautiful, generous, wealthy wives.

If you play the horses, may you play good horses,
If you want divorces, may you get divorces,
Be it plenty of sleep, or fortune, or fame,
Or to carry the ball for Notre Dame,

Whatever it is you desire or covet,
My boy, I hope you get it and love it.
And you'll use it a great deal better, I know,
Than the child you were a a day ago.

(Ogden Nash)

EXPERIENCE TO LET

Experience is a futile teacher,
Experience is a prosy preacher,
Experience is a fruit-tree fruitless,
Experience is a shoe-tree bootless.

For sterile wearience and drearience,
Depend, my boy, upon experience.
The burnt child, urged by rankling ire,
Can hardly wait to get back at the fire,

And, mulcted in the gambling den,
Men stand in line to gamble again.
Who says that he can drink or not?
The sober man?  Nay nay, the sot.

He who has never tasted jail
Lives well within the legal pale,
While he who's served a heavy sentence
Renews the racket, not repentance.

The nation bankrupt by a war
Thinks to recoup with just one more;
The wretched golfer, divot-bound,
Persists in dreams of the perfect round.

Life's little suckers chirp like crickets
While spending their all on losing tickets.
People whose instinct instructs them naught
But must by experience be taught,

Will never learn by suffering once,
But ever and ever play the dunce.
Experience! Wise men do not need it!
Experience! Idiots do not heed it!

I'd trade my lake of experience
For just one drop of common sense.

(Ogden Nash)