Hippoetry

Ok, you know how sometimes someone tells a story, and you know by the end that the only reason they told that story was because they thought they'd said something clever, and they wanted you to know how clever they were, even though you couldn't be present at the actual moment of said cleverness?

The blogging equivalent of that is to post an IM conversation you've had with someone in which you think you've been very funny. I know a couple of bloggers that do this, and I hate it. It reeks of desperation and insecurity. (For those of you who post IM's for other reason, and you know who you are, I'm totally not talking about you.) I don't mean recreating conversations you've had with people, because that takes a certain amount of framing and some memory and a good dose of creativity, because no one walks around taping their conversations. I mean the complete unwillingness to try and be a different funny, to have to cling to this morning's funny.

However, in the interest of seeing how the other half lives, and because really, this was too funny to keep between the two of us, I bring to you a Facebook conversation I had with my sister this morning. (Sorry about the formatting. I thought it would be hilarious and fun to put a photo at the bottom, but you know how blogger is with photos [hint: neither hilarious nor fun].)


Boo: we are doing grids at school (such as the grid of a magazine or a book or something) and to make it interesting, I am making my titles and sub-heads about hippopotamus's. So I've put for one subhead "God save thee, Hippopotamus, from the fiends that plague thee thus!" and also "do not ask for whom the Hippopotamu Tolls" which is less clever, but relevant, I'm sure...


Raych: Ah ha ha ha ha! I love a good 'hippopotamus/ancient mariner' reference.
This is just to say, I have eaten the hippopotamus that was in the ice box...



B: Once upon a marshland dreary
hippos wandered sleek and weary
over many quaint and curious
flowers on a marshy floor

Ah, distinctly one remembers
hippos revving heavy blenders
blending bows of blood red flowers
showered petals on the floor.



R: Hilarious AND gross!

Twas brillig, and the hippopos
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogoves
And the hippos outgrabe


B: Some say the world will end in hippos
some say in snakes
from what i taste of zats and zippos
I hold with those who favour hippos
But if it had to perish twice
I think I know enough of snakes
for suffocation is also great
and would suffice.





R: Whose woods these are, I think I know
He lives with the village hippo
They will not see me stopping here
To watch their woods fill up with snow

My own hippo must think it queer
To stop without a watering hole near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year

He gives his hippo ears a shake
To ask if there is some mistake
The only other sound's the ease
Of sweepy wind and downy flake

The woods are lovely, if you please
But I am holding back a sneeze
And hippos that stand too long, freeze
And hippos that stand too long, freeze


B: Hippo's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her breakfast is a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then belly subsides to belly.
So Eden sank to grief,
So the hippo goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.


R:Hippo is the thing with wrinkly skin
That perches on the soul
And snorts and blows the bubbles round
And never stops at all

And loudest on the plains is heard
And starved must be the lion
That could devour the fat hippo
That...kept so many warm

I've heard it in the wettest bog
And in the deepest swamp
And never did it pass a weed
Without stopping to chomp


B: I'm a hippo! Who are you?
Are you a hippo, too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't squeal!
They'd taxidermic us, you know.

How dreary to be human!
How public, like your stain
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring plain!


R: I do not like hip'potamus
I do not like them on a bus
I do not like them in a bog
I do not like them wrapped in fog

I do not like them soaked in marsh
I do not like them, yes, that's harsh
But now my yard is all a muss
I do not like hip'potamus


B:if i love You
(thick skin means
savannahs inhabited by roamingly
stern bright birds

if you love
me, hippo) distance is mind carefully
luminous with innumerable marshflowers
Of complete dream

if we love each (shyly)
other, what clouds do or Silently
Flowers resembles beauty
less than our snogging




R: O, my luv is like a grey, grey hippo
That's newly birthed in June
My luv is like the snorting and blowing
That's done oddly in tune

So fair art thou, my potamus
So deep in love am I
That I will love thy wrinkly face
Till all the marsh goes dry

Till all the marsh goes dry, my dear
And plains bake in the sun
And I will love thee still, my dear
While antelope shall run

And fare thee well, my only luv
And fare thee well a while
But I will come again for thee
In true potamus style




B: Hippo! Hippo! burning bright
In the marshes of the night,
What immortal hand or hoof
Could frame thy girthy simplicity?

In what distant swamps or seas
Swam you Hippo as thy please?
On your staunchy haunch aspire?
Birds on thy snout dare retire?

And what shoulder, and what rump.
Could twist the sinews of thy hump?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hoof? and what dread feet?





R: When I am dead, my hippo
Sing no sad songs for me
Plant thou no marsh plants at my head
Nor wide savannah tree

Be the ground dry above me
And sometimes soaking wet
And if thou wilt, remember
And if thou wilt, forget

I shall not hear your chomping
I shall not see your hide
I shall not see you march through bogs
As long as you are wide

And floating in the mud
That is never wet nor dry
A thousand thousand hippo things
Lived on, and so did I





B: I’ve heard there was a river horse
That often played, and would cavort
But you don’t really care for romping, do you?
It goes like this
Hippos and fish
The river dance, the swampy mix
The baffled hippotomus, it knew ya
potty knew ya
potty knew ya
potty knew ya
potty knew ya

Your skin was strong but you needed proof
You saw the hippo on the roof
It’s beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
You tied it to a whale crane
Air lifted it to Africain
And from its lips it blew a farewell to ya
farewell to ya
farewell to ya
farewell to ya
farewell to ya



R: I have to get to class
Alas
Hippos in the grass
Alas
Too wide for me to pass
Alas
I will be late for class
Alas