"Come live with me in the sewer"
said the cockroach to his mate
"it may be vile and impu-er
but the atmosphere is great!"

Was this from some show or old book of light verse? Or did he make it up? I have no way of knowing.

I know a dark secluded place,
A place where no one knows your face
The shadows pass and leave no trace -
It's called - Cthulhu's Hideaway!

The grim despair that seals your fate,
A nightmare that consumes your state,
The terror that devours your pate -
Within Cthulhu's Hideaway...

(envisage tangoing Shoggoths, if doing so doesn't send you into paroxysms of madness.)

We could dance step by step
With Nyarlathotep...

(...Tangoing amorphous horrors...)

"At the golden finger bowl
Or any place you know..."

From Vanished Urath to this place we came,
From India's Star we took the sacred name:
No virgin planet, but we make our place
A second earth, though held by demon-race.
This conquest sure, although our pace be slow
For Kalkin slays the Mothers of the Glow.
Brahma shall rule, while Vishnu may preserve,
No man or woman from this law shall swerve;
The body-masters must each soul's worth weigh
And where the soul must go the priests shall say.
Now comes the age, and long may its time last,
When karma truly is the law of caste.
A soul of envy keeps its own long log
And at the proper time is turned to dog.
Priests judge of greed, and love, hatred and lust;
And who would dare to say they are not just?
Your life is full of sin? But what of that?
Just feed some coins to the pray-o-mat!
You think I praise this order with faint damn?
'Tis naught to the new Buddha. I mean Sam.

I must say well done, but you're *so* good, I have to apologize for saying it, because I'm not up to it.

(slinks away, acknowledging himself to be moronic rubbish)

O mounds in thorny root encased
A solitary resting place
Wherein the Dominator waits
To wake and wreck the earth

Your moat and Lady ages gone
The minions whom you call upon
Shall barren be by battle song
After White Rose’s birth

The smuggler did a hunting go
For a world where trees could grow
To the fates she cast a throw
Among the leaves so green-o.

Chorus:
Seanie boy (Master) Sing ye well (Very well)
Hey down (Ho down) Derry derry down
Among the leaves so green-o
To my hey down down (To my ho down down )
Hey down (Ho down) Derry derry down
Among the leaves so green-o

They landed in a valley green.
Passage made in worlds between.
On the tree her heirs all leaned
Among the leaves so green-o.

The dragon hovers on the wing,
Dragon's children learn to sing.
All kept safe by Korval's Ring,
Among the leaves so green-o.

Taken first from the sand
This is Jela's last command:
Keep the tree where ever you land.
Among the leaves so green-o.

Oh. My. *bows*

The brown-faced and brown-clad,
Sift through your brown mire,
In search of whatnot to purvey.
All your treasures smell the same.

But again I speculate. abi, could you clarify?

Infernal Cthulhu eat us last!
Spare us long Thy mortal blast;
Lead us with most evil powers
Into Dark for countless hours.
Strip our leaders of defenders
Call down horrors from above!
Terror, pain be ours forever;
R'lyeh land we love!
R'lyeh, R'lyeh, R'lyeh, land we love!

Okay. Reading back, I see self-deprecation is something you do. Probably perfectly casual and just like I do myself. Perhaps it comes across better face to face, or it's just tweaked a pet peeve this morning.

But I see an increasing disparagement of achievement and hard-won skill, if it's not the very best. Anything we ourselves can do is rated at zero. Anyone with less skill is considered unworthy dirt. It seems to be a general trend, and I think it's unhealthy.

Which is to say: I've always enjoyed your contributions here at ML. I liked your tangoing shoggoths, easily as much as Fragano's impressive thingummy. Appreciate the Great amongst us, sure, but don't belittle ourselves. We don't all have to be sonnettists.

Sadly, though, I fear that sisuile's tune (@8) is now going to be stuck in my head all night.

(can you tell I'm procrastinating by reading ML?)

Just knock
three times
and tell the boss

that you
were sent
by Yog-Shothoth

and you
will see
by the Shoggoths

You're in
Chthulhu's hideaway!

(actually a show goth is somebody who wears black and works in a theater. but that's another story.)

The moon shone still
On Weathertop hill
As I dug up the shirt
from the pile of dirt

The wind in the willow played
A sweet melody
As the barrowwight I invaded
Chased after me

And though I got away
He's after me still
To take back the mithril
From Weathertop hill

This thread was the first hit.

I thought that Google only crawled once a month or so.

An omen arrives, a golden giant brighter than the sun.
More golden still, His voice, precise and polite,
The Sacred Twins' destiny has only just begun.

The Golden One's miracles inspire, and tales are spun
"Keep the Soul Trees safe: help the tall ones in their plight"
Dance, dance around the pyre of the Chosen One.

The clumsy whiteshells give the People so much fun
Smashing, crashing, the forest shows them how to fight
The Sacred Twins' destiny has only just begun.

Luminous strands of fate are lives undone
In fearsome symmetry cut, framed in memory's sight
Dance, dance around the pyre of the Chosen One.

In the forests of the night, the battle has been won,
But the darkness rages still against the light.
The Sacred Twins' destiny has only just begun.
Dance, dance around the pyre of the Chosen One.

Right. The O-fficial Making Light Poetry And Doggerel Game Rules:

1. Guess in ROT-13, acknowledge in the clear, both the topic and the source (if it's a pastiche)
2. All forms of verse and prose are welcome, and anyone who says otherwise will be keel-hauled. On a big ship. In eel-infested waters.
3. No slinking off because you like someone else's stuff better than your own*†. Not even inside your own head.
4. It's not a contest. Or, if it is a contest, Mike Ford wins.

-----
* To paraphrase Garrison Keillor, we have a backstage view of our own creations and a third-row view of everyone else's.
† I started off here with doggerel and worked up to sonnets.

Wyman will know soon
If his quest is nearly done
And he has a job.

Just sayin'.

A suggestion for subjects. I loved the vivid beauty, sometimes terror, evoked by Kim Stanley Robinson in his science-based descriptions of landscape, cities, and space in the Red, Blue, and Green Mars trilogy.

A suggestion for subjects. I loved the vivid beauty, sometimes terror, evoked by Kim Stanley Robinson in his science-based descriptions of landscape, cities, and space in the Red, Blue, and Green Mars trilogy.

I think in the UK, they call it "cutting a gravy naught". Or "rowing a navy boat" in Cockney rhyming slang.

sisuile (#8), haven't heard that tune for ages, but it came right back, strong as ever.

Those are just flavor notes; there are more along that line in the poem from different sources, but they're more obscured.

By dark Mordor did Sauron once
a black and monstrous tower devise
on Gorgoroth the haunted plain
that rotted with an unclean stain
under the sunless skys.
So there on hills of smoldering ash
orcs toiled beneath the screaming lash,
and there were turrets builded of black stones
that iron-crowned rose into Mordor-night
and dungeons sunk into Earth’s tortured bones
whose topmost levels never knew the light.
But, oh!, that abyss iron-bridged that moated
the Barad-Dur about with emptyness—
a chasm steep, rock-tumbled and soot-coated
where ever and anon the black mists floated
up from the pits flame-filled and bottomless…

(at this point, unfortunately, a person from Pasadena intruded, destroying the mood.)

==========
Saurry about that.

My heart has been stolen by falcons,
Lifted on flashing wings,
High over Salzarat's towers,
Up where the seawind sings.
Many's the time I have fallen
From looking away so high;
My heart has been stolen by falcons,
But I cannot touch the sky.

*I filked for years before I ever heard the word, but I never made it to a con. Maybe someday. I also kippled from a very young age. Seriously. Grade school.

This probably beats my idea of doing donuts in the highschool parking lot at midnight.

Definitely.

Where seldom are found
Malices ripping ground
And the mud men stay far, far away

I want to wake up in the city where boggans creep
And find the pook of the hill! The Gruagagh’s keep!

The farmers and patrollers should be friends,
Oh, the Farmers and patrollers should be friends.
One group links their fates with strings,
T'other's fixed on growing things,
But that's no reason why they can't be friends!

Frontier making folks should stick together
Frontier making folks should all be pals.
Malice scouts court the farmers' daughters
Farmers court patroller gals.

...nope, I got nuthin'

O thus be it ever when free-men shall stand
Between their lov'd home and the war's desolation;
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the AI that hath made and preserv'd us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In Bog is our trust!"
And the starry brass cannon in triumph shall wave
In the warrens of the free and the tunnels of the brave!

Spacebo tovarisch!

Fragano Ledgister @ 50 -- Good point; I am open to suggestions.

But now the stars are turning,
and horrors ride the waves;
and Great Cthulhu's come to town,
and Shoggoths now are slaves.

(dlbowman's wonderful #3 has apparently inspired me to sympathise with Shoggoths. Could this be the first sign of a creeping madness?)

The first sign of a creeping madness? No, dear friend, rest safe in the assurance that it is not that.

Listen to me, as when you heard your father
Sing long ago the song of other sands -
Listen to me, and then in chorus gather
On this frequency, as we cross these lands.

From lone oases hid in sandy canyons
Atmospheres divide us, and cold of space -
Yet still the blood is strong, my dear companions,
And we in dreams ride at a camel's pace.

We shall not tread again the wide and sandy plain
Where naught but night protects us from the sun
Nor gather in the souk to bargain once again
Returning to our tents when trading's done.

When last from great Damascus we had banish'd
The infidels crusading through our lands
We did not know our peaceful time had vanish'd
Corrupted by the oil beneath the sands.

And so we fled, and insha'Allah have found
A desert world where we may roam at last.
But still we turn, when calls to prayer sound
To Mecca, to the homeland of our past.

Always. "It's a par 4, water hazard bunker right, mine field left."

My advice, Mr. Scott: take the Mulligan.

Yeah, in retrospect I guess all the creeping was the first sign of a creeping madness.

[creeps away]

Oh, you've been creeping, too? No, I was kinda thinking of the other thing.

O Cybertron, o Cybertron,
Primes grant wisdom and grace
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From core to black of space!

Way uptime, in the garden of Eloi,
We sing songs and we celebrate all day.
We got it made, in the garden of Eloi
Where the sun shines on us every single day.

But at night strangers they enter in our home.
They have no reason but if we are alone
when night comes they can roll away the stone,
steal skin and bone, steal skin and bone.
Yeah, our simple life.

We're at home, in the garden of Eloi,
But we're on the run, we don't know who from.
We got it made, in the garden of Eloi,
Where we party all the day and all our life.

We had empire, we pushed the workers down.
Our finest hour, for which we wear the crown.
But they still remember, and want to have revenge,
To have revenge, to have revenge,
Yeah, our simple life.

And all the snow the wind blew high
Sparkled at streetlamps in the night sky
Such was our life, and who would think
That a winter night's soap bubble would break - "tink"

We Midwest kids so blue of eye
Ate corn of gold both mush and dry
I had no clue while wrapping 'gainst the cold
that Love would lead where Frost foretold.

Seeing verse about that, juxtaposed in my mind to Mary O'Meara by Poul Anderson....

(as to why, from one of Jordin Kare's songs...
...pushin' the speed of light
Well you've left behind you the world of men
There's no way in hell to go home again....
... pushin' the speed of light.....

Mary Aileen @67, not forgetting Lottie the Otter?

> Way uptime, in the garden of Eloi,

Bruce - I feel thick for asking this, but does that go with a tune I know well and just can't think of at the moment?

I'll spare you my two alternate last lines, thought of very belatedly.

I'll spare you my two alternative last lines, thought of very belatedly.

I hardly gave a single gasp
when I saw that rad'ioactive flash
my appetite was gone at last
the day my breeders died

And we were singing
bye-bye to a Darwinian life
twisted roots do not appeal
when it's the end of my line
I'll meander down to the library tonight
and see what kind of purpose I can find
Oh, what kind of a purpose I can find

Our ancient homelands starved in frozen night
And empires long since faded, but in name
and yet a Czar and Emperor still fight
and play again the famous old Great Game

And now my friendship circle has expanded
to include highest royalty, most keen
if we survive ordeals that are demanded
The folks get an astronomer as queen

Movable Type closes tags for you if you forget, though from the placement of the </em> tag (before the close quote), you didn't.

Albatross just happened to post his verse in italics. It's pure coincidence.

It's all good.

With apologies to all concerned authors whose work I've cribbed:

Return this loghyr to Garret's nest
Under the angry leaden skies
And grant to him a chance to best
Crask and Sadler's quicksilver lies
Cruel melodies play a city's despair
While dead resting minds are far from TunFaire
Garret's justice brings cold copper tears
A dead man recoups from old tin sorrows
To face the changes of four hundred years
Of whispering idols and bitter tomorrows
Let this shade to his stuffed chair rise
Under the angry leaden skies

Eat his flesh and gnaw his bones
and leave him roasting on the stove—
smash and trash and dash and crash
and eat the meat from shin to bone—
with bellies fat and greasy lips
we'll eat his arms and bite his hips,
tear and swear and scare and dare
and chew the tasty greasy bits.

There are four more verses. I trust you can see what work he was familiar with.

Let's see, I should try answering some....

Abi's #2: Gur jbeyq bs gur Zbgr va Tbq'f Rlr naq Gur Tevccvat Unaq, gubhtu V pna'g guvax bs n fcrpvsvp fprar dhvgr yvxr gung.

Braxis #51: Gur Zbba vf n Unefu Zvfgerff

Fragano #4: Ybeq bs Yvtug, and very nicely done.

My best researches in this area leave me as Wbua Tnyg (srsly! Who knew?), but that still leaves the question of what setting I'm using.

albatross @86:

Since it's setting (well, kindasorta setting), it's not a specific scene, but you're correct. Did you recognize the original of the pastiche?

---
I really should write a couple more verses, but it'll probably get lost if I wait for that.

F.Z. Fgveyvat ernyyl qbrf jevgr n evccvat lnea jura ur'f ba sbez.

It's perhaps harder to work out which poem I've shamelessly stolen from than it is the setting:

---

The Twk-man counts; one, two, three, four.
What is he counting, this patient creature
beside the River Derna?

He counts with a covetous air
What to us - not him - seems paltry fare
his salt; it's exact measure

As I've unaccountably neglected to learn German I am completely reliant on Google Translate, but

- would you by any chance be rendering Gur Gnl Oevqtr Qvfnfgre into the words of Yrjvf Pneeby - themselves rendered into Trezna, as spoken by sbervtaref?

All of a sudden I see Teresa's comments about people who demand the right to have their old posts removed in a different light.

Sarah S. @42: Cengpurgg'f Qvfpjbeyq, nyzbfg nalguvat frg va Naxu-Zbecbex (we know from Gur Avtug Jngpu that Naxu-Zbecbex has an official anthem, and some of the lyrics, which, fittingly, are less exalted than your filk.

Mary Aileen @67: Jvaavr gur Cbbu/gur Uhaqerq-Nper Jbbq (this feels like an easy guess, but for someone else one of the ones I'm staring blankly at might be.

Albatross @76: Yneel Avira, Cebgrpgbe

> Close

I was introduced to the English/French/German versions of Wnoorejbpxl by _Godel Escher Bach_ and was blown away. I agree the French one lacks a certain favpxre-fanpx, but it does show the flavours of the different languages nicely.

How am I only 'close' though - Xopher also seems to be thinking of Gur Gnl Oevqtr Qvfnfgre.

You got part of it: gung'f Ybf Natryrf, 2017 (Oynqrehaare gvzrfxrva). Ab cnegvphyne nagrprqrag cbrz, V cbfgrq gung orsber V fnj nov'f cbfg ba gur ehyrf (naq, url, jung ner ehyrf nobhg cbrgel sbe vs abg gb or oebxra?)

Steve Taylor @ 72:

Well, it's one I know well, YMMV. Gung'f Wreel Enssregl'f "Tneqra bs Ratynaq".

Thank the gods you didn't say "the Three Hundred"! Frank Miller and Pooh together would make my head explode.

> Steve Taylor @ 72:

> Well, it's one I know well, YMMV. Gung'f Wreel Enssregl'f "Tneqra bs Ratynaq".

Hmm - turns out I don't know it after all. I know *him* - but never heard that song. Very nice song (just checked it out on youtube) - and a very apt choice for the use you put it to.

And so
We
Had a cup of tea, and

"Right," said Bob, "Let's try and add a city,
Need a crowded city, to make the country go."
We tried some guards, some taverns and some bars,
A guild of thieves to rampage in the bustling bazaars --
But we was getting nowhere.

And so
We
Had a cup of tea, then

I went and tapped at the spaces on the map,
Said "Fill these gaps with a primitive or two."
Raiding tribesmen, camel-herding wise men,
Intemperate barbarians and hairy monasterians
Forest-dwelling hippies from the Age of the Aquarians
But none of them went nowhere.

And so
We
Had a cup of tea, and

"All right," Bob said, "Then how about religion --
Schism -- a smidge of inquisition over who
And how and why, and is it old-time, or new."
We dropped in scriptures, apostolic fractures,
Prophecies and heresies and books with dirty pictures,
Should have been a masterpiece of social manufacture
But did it get us anywhere?

Heck no.
We
Had another cuppa, then

"Look," I said, "What it's missing is the magic,
It's gotta have some rules," I added, "as you know."
So we mapped out a system, itemize and list 'em,
Principles and laws, with a price to make it tragic.
Tied it all together, tried to figure whether
Any of the consequences couldn't make it go.
"Right," said Bob, "Only now we need a story.
Does that fit in somewhere?"

"...No."

I don't know if a Barrayaran national anthem exists, nor any folksongs for various provinces-- must be something tearjerky about the beauty of the place that is now a radioactive desert.

How about "O Barrayar" sung to the tune of "O Tannenbaum"? I'm not familiar enough with the setting to pull it off myself, though.

Well, I've been suitably punished for my crime: now I can't stop whistling O Tannenbaum....

The library's
fascinating,
but to get in
takes some waiting -
The rare book room's
walls are bleeding,
but the Necronomicon's required reading.

All my profs
communicate in squeaks and coughs,
but if in class I should nod off,
I dream of fearful wings
on Things
from endless depths of Time.
I know I will pass with A's:
my roommate killed himself on haze-
ing week; and also my TA's
a human headed rat.
My frat
is Sigma Elder Sign.

Dearest Grandpa,
How is mother?
And my many-
tentacled brother?
I miss Dunwich
overwroughtly.
Love and kisses from your grandson Wilbur Whateley.

Nyna Furezna, Uryyb Zhqqnu Uryyb Snqqnu, cvpxrq hc naq qebccrq va gur Pguhyuh zlgubf.

[I've been doing better with the sf references than the music ones, for the most part.]

A favourite novelty song! Applicable to many situations – been in several. Heard there was a group called "Evtug, fnvq Serq", too.

(No offense meant to all the fantastic settings of fantastic settings that have appeared in this thread already. I love 113, by the way.)

Mark@109 -- That's who performed the original song. The lyricist's name is as I noted in @106. (I didn't think of rot13ing the name because I didn't think anybody would recognize it -- and nobody's said they have.)

I just learned it in a charming rendition by Gordon Bok and Cindy Kallet.

It's a story of a handsome doctor
Who got on at the same time as preacher man
He was very dedicated to his sister
but from the cops he ran

Till the one day when the doctor met the captain
and he learned the joys of shaped protein for lunch
so they'd all hang out and hate the feds together
That's the way they all became the firefly bunch.

The firefly bunch
The firefly bunch
That's the way they became the firefly bunch.

It's a sliver of glass,
It is life, it's the sun,
It is night, it is death,
It's a trap, it's a gun

A tree when it grows,
A plant in a field,
A knot in the wood,
The red ground will yield

The wood of the wind,
A cliff, a fall,
A scratch, a lump,
It is nothing at all

It's people breathing free,
It's the end of the slope,
It's a beam, it's a void,
It's a hunch, it's a hope

And canal-banks all speak
of the waters of Mars,
It's the end of the strain,
The joy in your heart

I guess that would be Erq/Terra/Oyhr Znef - Xvz Fgnayrl Ebovafba - but I can't guess what (if any) the original source material is. Can you enlighten?

btw - it's worth having a listen to Ovt Erq by Senax Oynpx (rk Cvkvrf). Nice to know there are a few sf readers in the music world.

(Being too lazy to convert ROT-13, I'm trying to learn to read it directly.)

O Barrayar, o Barrayar,
how dutiful thy Vor are!
How glittering at Winterfair,
more gracious still in summer's air,
O Barrayar, o Barrayar,
How dutiful thy Vor are.

(repeat in Russian, Greek, and French)

Which reminds me of my long-ago dream to draw some of the well-known buildings of the capital at Vorbarr Sultana, and maybe a Metro map. I had started out noting all the passages that actually describe any outdoor scenes, but you know what? Bujold doesn't really do a lot of visual description. I was truly taken aback; her world is very, very rich, but when you look closely, the richness is all human character, very little is visual. What's there leaves plenty of room for artistic interpretation. Eventually I'll finish that project.

The usual suspects are back, and Charlie is going to be surprised by his mother-in-law elect. Meanwhile, in England, his son encounters the Secret Police.... And Alberto Gonzales is earning his pay in Spain, while trying to figure out how he could collect the price the Fascists have put on his own head.

I'm still doing some working on the plot outline. And trying not to actually write anything. Always scribble, scribble, scribble.

> Oh how very freaky that ROT-13 for Green is Terra.

And furthermore, "irk" is ROT-13 for "vex" - the only word I know which survives the ROT-13 process with its meaning intact!

Nice Barrayar piece btw - now we need a second verse about dull knives and genetic purity.

Carrie S. at #125:

> Steve Taylor: "The Waters of March".

Thanks. I'm finding this thread educational in ways I didn't expect. I was actually thinking of Brian Eno's "Third Uncle", though I can see it's not actually a match.

Antonia T. Tiger at #127:

> OK, I'm going for NaNoWriMo again.

Oddly enough I was just coming to the same conclusion. I did it once before, in 2003 I think it was, and it was a buzz, in a gruelling kind of way.

>Oddly enough I was just coming to the same conclusion. I did it once before, in 2003 I think it was, and it was a buzz, in a gruelling kind of way.

Technically, I'm not, because I want to make myself finish the thing I started during NaNoRiMo 2007 - but I will do it during November, because I need to give myself a time frame.

> Steve@100 - The "Close" was only that I was stealing from the quite good German translation of Wnoorejbpxl rather than doing my own (and/or Google's)

Ah - I see. Way above my head - it will be a while yet before my German is up to comparing variant translations of Wnorejbpxl.

It's a brilliant idea mixing that with Gur Gnl Oevqtr Qvfnfgre - has that "inevitable in retrospect" feeling.

Disappointing part is that when an English version was done, changes were made that implied Spring, rather than the Autumn rains ending Summer. So much northern-centric so much of the time. I believe the story of the USian tourist who refused to admit he'd arrived in an Australian Summer when it was Winter at home, because he knew that Summer and Winter came from the Earth in its orbit getting closer and further from the Sun.