Limericks of Mass Destruction

When Andrew got tickets for us to see Sarah Jones do a one-woman play, I was a little reluctant. See, I thought it was going to be, like, one of those new age poetry readings (like the bit in Rent where they start mooing), something his film school buddies recommended. But, I figured, everything is worth trying once. (Except for broccoli.) So we went to 45 Bleecker Theater for the Friday night show of "Bridge and Tunnel". It was nothing like what I expected - I was completely blown away by the performance. She does dozens of different characters, switching back and forth between guises at the drop of a hat. She has a really instinctive understanding of the backgrounds of each one - each seemed like it was effortless, not like a performance. The poetry read by each individual character was pretty neat - some was funny, some was serious, all of it was well written. But the one by the young Vietnamese character just reached out and grabbed me - the style and the rhythm felt right, as if all other forms of verbal expression were just shadows of what is possible. It was the first poetry slam I had ever heard, and as I listened to it, it made me really want to write poetry like that too. I mean, I'm not going to quit my day job and move to the village and turn all bohemain, but it's been a while since something new called to me like that.

Anyway, this post is called "limericks of mass destruction" because that's my favorite line from the performance - the main character is warned that the government might investigate his gathering of immigrants reading poetry, and he responds, "what are they expecting to find - limericks of mass destruction?" So, in that spirit, I have one:

The UN once got an injunction
Barring Iraqi weapons production
But what did Bush see
In each bombed city?
Just limericks of massive destruction.