Boogie Man
A snowman in the grocery store
To the carrot section goes
And makes a scene each time because
It’s where he picks his nose
Letting Down My Gourd
I’m not a conversationalist
I do not scream and shout
When Halloween arrives each year
I need pumpkin to talk about
Limerick (Untitled)
Two candles named Sadie and Satch
Think their partner is really a catch
These two are now learning
A love that is burning
Cuz each one has just met their match
One Liner
Mathematicians at Halloween celebrate Trig or Treat
Reigning Cats and Dogs
Sometimes experiments must be tweaked
In order to work out well
Like Pavlov’s dog chasing Schrodinger’s cat
The first time it heard the bell
The Silent Alphabet
Of the two letters A
In AARDVARK you see
One of them’s sitting there
Silently
B is the last letter
In the word of NUMB
We do not pronounce it
I think that is DUMB
The first C in SCIENCE
Is a mystery to me
Why is it there?
It’s non-scense to me
One D in ADDITION
In algebra books
Has simply been ADDED
Because of its looks
The E’s at the end
Of DONE, GONE, and ONE
All make the same sound
That linquists call NONE
F is for failing
To produce an eff sound
In the words SNIFF and STIFF
When another one’s ‘round
As for G, the DESIGN
Is to act silently
I give up, I RESIGN
Why is this? GNUS to me
When the H is kept silent
HONESTLY, I am sour
Because I miss saying it
Each passing HOUR
In a word, it’s DECEIT
To have a silent I
But we say it when absent
WHY? Oh MY, MY
And what’s with the J?
As in jet, I’m not jokin’
It means MARIJUANA
Is always mis-spoken
A K being silent
As I recollect
Is something that is
KNOT, correct?
And regarding the L
There’s nothing odder
Than the crazy way
English speakers spell SOLDER
The M is difficult
Its problem, chronic
Only one gets pronounced
In the word MNEMONIC
N is a problem also
That needs to be stemmed
Or else our language
Could be CONDEMNED
O is a rare one
To be silent, and how
But by saying that
I’m in JEOPARDY now
Stating P’s never silent
Is an awful deceit
And for this I can hand you
A printed RECEIPT
Over Q, there’s discussion
Complicated to me
What’s silent in ‘LACQUER’
The Q or the C?
R is a challenge
So please don’t get violent
When I tell you that CARROT
Has its second one silent
S is important
I’m sure you agree
So why not pronounce it
At the end of DEBRIS?
The T sound often
Gets thrown away
Every time you LISTEN
To a DEBUT BALLET
Sometimes U’s no good
And its sound gets killed
When that happens, you know
We are talking REBUILD
The only example
Of a silent V
Is the second one in REVVED
It seems to me
For unpronounced W’s
I must go along
With the curious claim
That WRITE is the same as WRONG
The silent X and an S
Might rub you raw
When someone speaks
Of a FAUX PAS
A Y isn’t necessary
It could be gone
Based on the way
You say BEYOND
And last not least
I offer to you
A silent Z and an S
In this last RENDEZVOUS
Kevin Ahern is an Oregon State University professor Emeritus of Biochemistry and Biophysics. In his retirement, he writes verses.
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