There once was a blog gone to hell

Before I say anything else, I want to thank Scott for the incredible compliment of asking me not just to judge his limerick contest, but to judge this particular limerick contest.

As a Jewish kid (of 66), I would not have imagined until early this week being able to step out from under my yarmulke and pass judgment on the merit of blasphemies fashioned mostly (I assume) by Christians. Any not written by persons at least born Christian, regardless of later apostasies, I would have to say, aren’t blasphemous. Or are they, if they are uttered to Christians?

Gosh! If I tell a Jesus joke to another Jew, deep in a Jewish context—say in a synagogue in Jerusalem—is it blasphemy? What if a devout Christian, slumming, overhears it? These are deep and muddy waters. (I always loved his “Got My Mojo Workin,’ ” even though I was pretty sure that Jews didn’t have mojos.)

Anyway, I am deeply honored.

Scott assured me that I could award prizes any way I wanted, so I have chosen to separate the entries into two groups, but not those he designated because there were almost no entries in his “Easter-is-about-baby chicks” category. I awarded prizes in these divisions:

• Merely Blasphemous
• Blasphemous with Crudities

First place in the Merely Blasphemous category, and the overall winner today, fresh from behind a rock, is this outstanding effort, No. 18. I gave it full points because it made me laugh out loud:

So I’m hanging here up on this tree,
As my father expected of me.
Pontius Pilate said, “Guilty.”
Now I’m feeling quite wilty.
But don’t worry, I’ll see you in three . . .

I dislike the presence in all poetry, especially limericks, of a superfluous auxiliary verb added for meter or to switch the tense of the main verb for purposes of rhyming, as in:

“Please drop dead, dear,” my mother did say.

The second-place Merely Blasphemous entry, No. 5, rich with literariousness, employs what might be thought of as a similar dodge in the last line: “Who defied Satan, death to transfix.” I have chosen, however, to think that the author had not simply been unable to find another rhyme for chicks and Styx, but was actively employing the device known as anastrophe or inversion, in order to change emphasis (as in “the forest primeval”). If the author here was really just out of rhymes (and was unable to work in Stevie Nix), I would call upon him or her to surrender the beautiful second-place Merely Blasphemous crown. It would only bring him or her pain in the end, of the kind Preparation H could never help.

A basket of three fluffy chicks
Floating calmly down old river Styx
Were astonished to see
Charon rowing back He
Who defied Satan, death to transfix.

In the Blasphemous with Crudities category, the top prize goes to No. 10, for a joke I had said to myself a number of times over the years but never felt I could repeat out loud. I still haven’t repeated it out loud even though, as noted, I’m Jewish. It just seems reasonable to err on the side of caution. (I assume that “whatever gods may be” make a distinction between crude blasphemies said to several other people and those merely sent around the world on the Internet.)

M. Magdalene seemed to be humming
A tune unbefit for this numbing
Ordeal. “In three days,”
She said, all a-glaze,
“I'll get a divine second cumming.”

And second place in Blasphemous with Crudities goes to No. 4, which not only is the crudest entry, it also contains, in line 2, perhaps the ultimate self-referencing joke.

So here I hang, nailed to a tree.
And Christ, I'm just thirty-three!
The “King of the Jews?”
Oh piss off, you screws.
Dad, whack that f*ck Judas for me!

Finally, a tip of the Hebrew Hat to entries 1 and 8, for nodding to “I can see your house from here.” They would have made even my father smile.

—al sicherman

Congratulations to our overall winner, Phil F! To Joe A, the first-place winner in the Crudities category, as well as second-place winners Ann W (Merely Blasphemous) and Sean D (Crudities): loudest hosannas. To the talented contributing poets of Going40: well done, all. Befitting work of such eschatological significance, your reward will be great in heaven. —SR