SoP 4: "Common Cold" and Elusive Eloosive

Common Cold

Ogden Nash

Go hang yourself, you old M.D.!

You shall not sneer at me.

Pick up your hat and stethoscope,

Go wash your mouth with laundry soap;

I contemplate a joy exquisite

In not paying you for your visit.

I did not call you to be told

My malady is a common cold.

By pounding brow and swollen lip;

By fever's hot and scaly grip;

By those two red redundant eyes

That weep like woeful April skies;

By racking snuffle, snort, and sniff;

By handkerchief after handkerchief;

This cold you wave away as naught

Is the damnedest cold man ever caught!

Give ear, you scientific fossil!

Here is the genuine Cold Colossal;

The Cold of which researchers dream,

The Perfect Cold, the Cold Supreme.

This honored system humbly holds

The Super-cold to end all colds;

The Cold Crusading for Democracy;

The Führer of the Streptococcracy.

Bacilli swarm within my portals

Such as were ne'er conceived by mortals,

But bred by scientists wise and hoary

In some Olympic laboratory;

Bacteria as large as mice,

With feet of fire and heads of ice

Who never interrupt for slumber

Their stamping elephantine rumba.

A common cold, gadzooks, forsooth!

Ah, yes. And Lincoln was jostled by Booth;

Don Juan was a budding gallant,

And Shakespeare's plays show signs of talent;

The Arctic winter is fairly coolish,

And your diagnosis is fairly foolish.

Oh what a derision history holds
For the man who belittled the Cold of Colds!

- - - - -

http://www.thinkgeek.com/images/products/additional/large/bc01_mega_giant_plush_microbes_cold.jpg

- - - - -

Elusive Eloosive,
Why say that you hide?
You show us your talent,
Not keep it inside.

Perhaps it's because

Right after you write,

You go off in seclusion;

But at least you don't bite.

- - - - -

It's not much, not the greatest, but I felt like doing this sort of thing today. Not quite sure why I stuck a poem about 'Loo in with a poem about the (un)common cold.... perhaps because his whole poetry nudge is contageous or something...

Maybe it's not the best idea to crack illness jokes in a time of an international pandemic, and when a late-night host got in a bit of trouble for a joke... then again, procrastination's not a good idea either, so the low-quality joke stays.