Nothing Rhymes With Peculiar.

in Random Crap

me: Is there any accent that I can use where “peculiar” and “tubercular” will rhyme?

Victor: I already regret asking this, but…why?

me: I’m trying to write a poem but I’m having problems with the meter.  And the rhythm.  And the rhyming.

Victor: Are you sure you’re writing a poem?

me: It’s more of a limerick really.

Victor: Limericks have to rhyme.  That’s sort of the whole point of limericks.

me: I suppose it could be an essay.  A very short, dirty essay.

Victor: Good luck with that.

PS.  I finally finished my poem and I couldn’t get it to work as a limerick or an essay or anything else, so I changed it up completely but I still like it.

A limerick not dirty and a harpy not mean:

These are things that I’ve never seen.

A tumor for fun and a beautiful cyst:

These are things that just don’t exist.

A nipple, a knife, and something much worse:

These are the things that I have in my purse.

195 thoughts on “Nothing Rhymes With Peculiar.”

Read comments below or add one.

  1. Just wanted to mention that VIDA came out with their “Dudeville” list of major mags that have many more male than female reviewers (and review many more male than female books).

    Not fair to women writers who get less sunshine in the press.

  2. This confirms what I already knew in my heart..I need a fucking purse. And you are Yoda-like in your wisdom. Maybe thinking need I Yoda purse perhaps hmmmm?

  6. Something much worse . . . worse than a nipple and a knife? Hmmm. I promise now that I will never ask you if you have gum in your purse.

  12. Just a quick poem. About purses & nips. Lady, you are Texas brilliance!
    Pure art and soul. Whenever you have a ‘down’ day, remember that you have people reading your work.
    I made the comment about the Jesus Horse on twitter, but only bc I was raised Evangelical and infused with the wisdom of the uneducated.

  16. well, yeppers, that is a poem…and I so totally get it…especially the purse part but don’t tell my kids….they are my toys not theirs!…not sure if that makes me scary or really cool…Both?

  17. Um, is there some sort of implied relationship between the knife and the nipple?

    I’m okay with either by itself. It’s having them both that’s giving the piece a sort of serial killer trophy taking vibe.

    Or maybe that’s what you’re going for. Never really did “get” poetry all that well.

  18. @Dominic – a haiku is a 5-7-5 syllable count. Like so:

    A limerick not dirty
    and a harpy is not mean:
    things I’ve never seen.

    Jenny’s is far better than haiku.

  25. Someone was trying to steal my wallet once in a store before an employee came and intervened. In it I carry a nipple too, and I would have been very upset had I lost it. Not my nipple mind you, a New Kids on the Block trading card with Jordan Knight flashing his nipple that I use for comic relief and in case I ever run into him at the grocery store, pediatrician or dry cleaners. Anyway, I love the poem, and I’m also relieved someone else has nipples in their purse.

  32. You have a nipple in your purse???? I’m thinking the knife had something to do with it?

  33. aaaaand i love you. seriously. love. a few years ago as i waited in the parking lot with my sister for my baby shower to start (allowing the guests to think they were surprising me), i found not one, not two but three clementines in my purse.

  34. I’m trying to decide what is much worse than having a nipple in your purse – some guy’s penis that you cut off with the knife? I feel a rough night of nightmares coming on ….

  41. For some reason, after reading this, I just can’t stop thinking about Sweeney Todd (knife) meets Alice in Wonderland (the purse). Y’know Sweeney accidentally walking along and falling down in Wonderland and messing everything up in their world. Sweeney Todd would have a knife fight with The Queen and she would end up beheading him and all the other characters would be sent on a journey half way around the world searching for that gem of a nipple.

  42. I love it! But I thought I was the rhymer (yes that’s a word…..in my world) of this relationship!

  43. Nuk. Playtex. Avent.
    People. Why do we jump to these conclusions?
    Well, yeah–Jenny–
    but that’s profiling and profiling is wrong.

  44. Oh, Jenny…
    Life with you must be like walking around beside a man with a rabid beaver strapped to his back: You never know when that animal will strike but you know it will be one helluva show when it does….
    You rock, Jenny. Thank you for lighting up what has been an otherwise ridiculously dark birthday.

  45. I spent much of the morning getting sad while sorting through old family pictures I am taking to the kids this weekend , but then I read your poem and now I feel much better. No more sorting pictures until I am with the kids. You do good work. Nick

  52. I once had a beautiful cyst, on my eyebrow. But every time my dad saw me he would ask if I got into a fight becuase he thought my eye was swollen even though I’d had it since I was born, that jackass. I got it removed when I was 17, the only cosmetic surgery to date.Hopefully the only cosmetic surgery I will ever get.

  55. You’re off your rocker. And that’s why we’re friends. (I secretly consider you my friend. Not in a stalkerey way, just in a we both have social anxiety and will never meet probably because of that but if we did we would be totally friends sort of way. That wasn’t real English. Carry on.)

  57. Love the poem– and the purse contents! Reminds me when I was 12 and babysitting for this little kid. When the Dad came home, I explained, “He finally went to sleep but he was crying and crying because he couldn’t find his nipple.” The Dad just looked at me strangely like “Why was my son looking for his nipple?” and “IS his nipple MISSING?” On the way home, I realized I meant to say “pacifier” not “nipple!” Argh! (embarrassing)

  58. If only Bilbo had led off with this limerick for a riddle he would have had a much easier time with that pesky Gollum.
    What does it have in it’s pursesss that’s much worsesss?

  62. I often want to add a reply, then read the other ones & begin to feel unworthy. I’m powering through that today 🙂
    I think you could do a sister site as The Poetess. I would follow that one, too.
    Love you!

  63. to me it sounds like the disease that took my mother and many other women…i hope i misunderstood the poem

  65. The doctor had said he could cure her,
    Of a tubercular cyst most peculiar,
    She went under the knife,
    But still lost her life,
    A malignant, but beautiful tumor.

  68. “Vesuvular.” Meaning: pertaining to or like mount Vesuvius. As in, “her temper is, like, Vesuvular violent.” I may or may not have made this up. Either way, you can rhyme it with “peculiar.”

    You’re welcome.

  78. A tumor for fun! That’s what I’d like to see. Tumors that cause healthy weight loss and bouts of serious joy, along with not taking over your whole body and killing you. That’s the kind of tumor I could get behind.

    Also, why do you have a nipple in your purse? Just asking.

  81. I kinda feel bad that one of the only things I am getting from this is that you have a NIPPLE in your PURSE!!!! Why does one carry a NIPPLE around in their PURSE? I must doing something incredibly wrong!

  83. bwhahahaha…you’ve learned a “rule” in poetry: when you can’t rhyme it, change it. The other is make it fit, anyway. Why? Because poetry has no rules, despite all those English scholars cringing. Now, all you need is for Robin Williams to read it out loud and boom…you’re set for viral. 😀

  84. Guys, I think the better question is why don’t all of you have a nipple in YOUR purse?! I can think of several uses: What if you find a random baby sloth and have only 10 minutes to nurse it back to to health? Just think how far ahead you’d be if you already had the nipple handy! Or if someone was robbing you and your only chance of survival was to squirt them in the eye with hot sauce? HOW WOULD YOU DO THAT WITH OUT A SPARE NIPPLE?!?!?!?! It seems pretty legit to me.

  85. Both words are slant rhymes — they come near to rhyming but do not really rhyme– and would totally work in a limerick as I shall demonstrate, having spent many of my years writing dirtier and better ones than this.

    In the midst of a poweful suck
    I choked when he started to buck.
    “Do you think it’s peculiar
    to feel so tubercular?”
    he asked, hoping not to get stuck.

  87. You are riot! I am keeping arms distance of you and your purse! LOL!

  88. You should rewrite the lyrics to “My Favorite Things”. I kinda wanted to sing your writy thing you wrote, non-limerick whatever to the tune of “My Favorite Things” Go Jen

  93. That’s what those poems are for where nothing rhymes, or makes sense…
    I feel peculiar
    You seem tubercular
    It’s sunny out
    And crows are calling

    The End

    Yeah. Edgar Allen and me. Exactly the same.

  94. Hi Jenny, your poem concerns me (and not for the usual humorous reasons). I hope everything is OK, and that I am reading more into your verse than you intend (yes, I am a Mom, so we worry about everything and everyone). Just in case – sending prayers and good thoughts your way!

  96. Soda will sting when it enters your nose
    so be careful when reading the Bloggess’s prose

    And if she doubles down, by writing in rhyme
    it’ll happens again,for the hundredth time.

  97. The contents of a woman’s purse are sacred and I feel ever so blessed that you have shared what those contents are with us! We’re not worthy…we’re not worthy! 😀

  98. I read your brief opus, what you called a verse
    It’s not really bad, I’ve read a lot worse
    But I worry a bit about what’s in your purse;
    You should see a doctor, or maybe a nurse.

  99. The only thing I’m surprised by is that some of these people are surprised you have a nipple in your purse. Also, I’m pretty sure peculiar rhymes with orange.

  100. I see a marketing opportunity here, so I will now offer an excerpt from my new book, called Something Smells Like Pee (no, seriously, I really did name it that):

    Forks
    This drawer was once full of forks
    but now there are only three
    What ever happened to the rest
    is a fucking mystery.

    (cursties) (slowly backs off stage)

  101. Your poem belongs in a new edition of “The Moon is Shining Bright as Day” , perhaps the best collection ever of amusing verse for the young at heart. Every child should have his/her own copy. Nick

  103. Jenny, I’m hoping it’s not opposite day at your house, and that this post isn’t really about the opposite of what it’s saying. Please let us know how it goes once you can talk about it, if I’m right. No one fights alone, not for (potential) breast cancer or for depression and anxiety. Hugs and love to you.

  105. I wrote a lot of poetry from the 7th grade until I graduated from college when for whatever reason it was like I could no longer write them ever again. I had written somewhere around 5 to 10 poems a day for several years, all different. Even in the 7th grade teachers were telling my parents my poetry was so good they thought it could be published and not as a children’s poetry. When I was in high school some of my teachers got worried about me because I guess they weren’t used to high school students being able to write in voices other than their own and some of my poems were about subjects I had never experienced but seemed so realistic that concerns had been raised. I told them I simply wrote what I thought I was seeing on the faces of those around me, none of the poems I wrote were ever about me, it was almost like I didn’t have any experiences to write one about myself. I managed one more, to my husband, before we got married over five years ago, which was around 7 years after the last one had been written. I haven’t been able to write another one since. I really miss writing them.

    Anyway, I can safely say that poetry does not have to rhyme at all if you don’t want to, very little of mine ever did, but then I always wrote in free verse.

  107. .
    .

    “Inventory”
    by Dorothy Parker

    Four be the things I am wiser to know:
    Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.

    Four be the things I’d been better without:
    Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.

    Three be the things I shall never attain:
    Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

    Three be the things I shall have till I die:
    Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.

    .
    .

    “Inventory”
    by Dorothy Parker

    Four be the things I am wiser to know:
    Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.

    Four be the things I’d been better without:
    Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.

    Three be the things I shall never attain:
    Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

    Three be the things I shall have till I die:
    Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.

  108. Right, woman. I feel I can be over-familiar because a) I don’t know you, and b) I have drunk JUST enough wine to feel confident to post here. I sense a disturbance in the Force. I also don’t have, y’know, oomph, in blogging circles. It’s witchcraft wot has led me astray for many a year… Yeeeeeesssss… Witchcraft. With the writey, and the bloggy. Well, I made something, courtesy of my door (thank you, door) which, I thought, you might like. HOW DO I MAKE IT POST?! Bollocks. There is no door-posty-my-door-knob-IS-Princess-Leia-button! Curse you, internets. I try to love this woman and THIS is what you reduce me to. I will find a way mutters. In other news, I’m British, so I’m allowed to say bollocks. Especially when tipsy. Which means drunk. Rat arsed big bollocks drunk. I love you. In a non-threatening way. Feel free to use the somehow forthcoming Leia Doorknob image FOR YOUR OWN PERSONAL DELECTATION. Sorry for shouting. I think. I’ll be gibbering over in THAT bit of chefs pace. CYPBERSPACE. BOLLOCKING AUTOCORRECT.

  110. Mewlier. Describes a cat which is more perturbed than the baseline cat. You’re welcome.

  111. When my daughter doesn’t know what to say she says “potato”. Seems like it might work for you…

  117. I have to take issue with this issue of rhyme;
    I’ve found it will work from time to time;
    To make up my own words, though it may seem unrulier;
    And though it may seem, to some, quite peculiar.

    Knock knock, motherf#####!

  118. Why do people find it peculiar,
    to like furniture made of old fur.
    For my nightstands a sheep,
    and though prices are steep,
    It was bought in the buff from my ‘puter.

  121. Maybe I’m reading it all wrong, but I’m really confused as to how the majority of the comments are taking this as light-hearted nonense verse – this seems pretty dark (and still beautiful) to me. Keeping things in a purse seems to symbolise keeping something close and by your side at all times, the contents of a woman’s purse being sacred and all. I hope everything is all right xx

  122. I totally don’t have cancer, you guys. Seriously, I’m fine. It’s just a poem. Although I did write this while waiting for results from an iffy mammogram, so maybe some of that leaked into my subconscious. I’m totally fine though. Aside from dense breast tissue that gives you some weird scares but then ends up being totally benign. Sorry if that’s too much information. This is why I shouldn’t write poetry.

  123. Since I couldn’t figure out how peculiar and tubercular wouldn’t rhyme, I think West Coast Canadian is the accent you’re looking for.

  126. @jojo, yes, I too am firmly convinced that Jenny is attempting to pass off as her own the lyrics of the banned songs from “The Sound of Music.” Then again, in that musical, “peculiar” probably rhymed with “Fuhrer.” Let’s just try not to think about it.

  127. I find it to be most peculiar
    How limerick writers will fool yer.
    You promise us ditties
    Of bollocks and titties
    And never deliver, ya tool, yer.

    (the trick is that a rhyme has to link the last stressed syllable in the line)

  128. Waiting for a script at CVS
    Without my wine
    I’m a hot mess.

    Your poem made me LOL so second L that the people sitting next to me left.
    Thanks for helping to lessen the suck of CVS.

  129. What you must do to rhyme peculiar
    Is sentence-break, like this: Spicule, your
    Jets of gas astound and awe me,
    Like Icarus, I want my mommy.

  131. If you used the phrase ‘two things’ or ‘three things’you would have the meter spot on.

  137. I don’t know why I want to know what ‘something worse’ in your purse could possibly be, but I do. The suspense is making me want to eat a lot of ice cream. And I have none. So thanks for that!

  138. Clues, more clues as to what is worse in your purse.
    I thought you had put the boob mushrrom in a jar to carry with you.

  143. Possible duplicate post.. A SIX LINE POEM OR STANZA IS CALLED A ‘HEXASTICH’ and end part rhymes with stick. You must be the reason i stumbled across thus word last week. Awesome.

  144. I write poetry too. One time I wrote a zombie romance poem. It was one of the most romantic things I have ever written.

  148. A nipple and a knife in your purse? I hope there will be a subsequent more explanatory post.
    LOL I pee too much when I read this blog.

  149. I like Minnesota Red’s poem – awesome!! Actually I haven’t had time to read all the responses but my first thought for what rhymes with peculiar is Bloggess!!

  150. I worry about a knife in your purse. I can cut myself getting a knife out of a drawer. If I was digging around in my purse I might come out without a hand.

  152. I love reading your blog. It’s amazing.

    I’m almost afraid to ask: Why is there a nipple in your purse? The knife I get, but the nipple has me a bit confused.

  157. What a poem. I agree that there’s never been a pretty tumour or cyst. (Not that I have ever heard of, at least)…a nipple a knife and something else. . . hmm, that one leaves me thinking. ~Catherine

  158. As a mom I understand to never question what is in purse (there is ALWAYS a reason) but I must admit you have me wondering about the story behind the nipple, knife, and something else.

  160. There once was a blogger from Wall
    Who was no good at rhyming at all
    But there’s a knife in her purse
    And I’ve a fear of the nurse
    So I’ll critique her poem come fall.

    But here’s where it gets peculiah
    (And the last thing I’d try is to fool ya)
    There’s a nipple in there
    So I’m wondering where
    Could be the left boob of Julia?

    (Hey, cut me some slack, I’m an IT guy.)

  165. ::::Standing up slow clap, scratch right nipple, sit back down::::: I enjoyed it.
    I thought about you when I went to Elliott Bay Bookstore on Saturday, I looked up to the top of the stairs where you stood and I pointed and said to my friend, “Jenny Lawson, The Bloggess stood right there.” And she said, “You tell me that every time we come here, really get over it you are acting like a 12 year Bieber fan.” I love she said Beaver Fan and I said “I said 12 is a little early for a Lesbian to know she likes ….you know…isn’t it?” She walked away from me. Bieber does sound like BEAVER and we are gay, it was a logical mistake. I just need someone to back me up here.

  167. I can’t claim to have any knowledge of poetry whatsoever because I never “got it” but for what its worth I think its really quite clever! Very good.

  168. I cannot possibly match the cleverness of the previous messages, but I’m pretty sure I can help Steve (164). Obviously, bubble-poo. You’re welcome, Steve.

  171. I would buy a book of Bloggess poetry in a hot minute. 🙂 No one else could use the word “nipple” with such beauty.

  172. I am confused… is it your nipple or did the knife somehow take another’s persons nipple..

    and this something else… could it be an antidote?

  177. That woman extraordinaire, our Bloggess
    found poecizing a cause of some stress
    She showed Victor some verse
    His response was quite terse
    Leaving Bloggess to digress quite rhyme-less.

  179. Dear Bloggess. I’m super shitty at rhyming so have this instead: http://telegramsfromdownton.tumblr.com
    In the event that you already knew of it – “Isn’t this awesome?!”
    In the event that you are only now discovering it – “You’re welcome.”
    Yours sincerely,
    The Very English Miss Atherley

  181. Boobular…tubular? I don’t know. But the b on my laptop is broken so this was really hard to type.

  185. Victor’s wrong. You really don’t need meter or rhythm or rhyme for something to be a poem, necessarily. Poems can be anything, so long as the structure adds at least some significance.

  186. I wrote a rap about my kids to Busta Rhymes “pass the corvoisaier” (crap spellchecker isn’t registering corvoissuierrr as a word so its spelled wrong) anyways. I tweeted. Instagramed and Facebooked it. Rappers follow me on Twitter bc they think im an up and coming rapper. They r goimg to PISSED when they realize im from coastal maine. I wear kim rogers floral pjs to bed. Anyhoo. I think u got mad skillz brah.

  187. College girls follow like lemmings. College boys use to much Axe. Grown up girls want clothes that are slimming. Grown up boys…don’t exist.

    Oh wait. We’re doing poetry? You talked about true things in your life, so I talked about the true things in mine, such as a typical day at work. Damn. I always do this wrong.

  190. Somehow, turning your usual way of thinking into poetry produces truly horrifying results. It’s like you let a maniacal clown on a tricycle recite your thoughts.
    That was a compliment. I think 🙂

  192. Julia rhymes with peculiar, but only if you have an awesome Aussie accent. By a funny coincidence our former Prime Minister’s name is Julia, so you could write a poem about her. While still in office she delivered the best misogyny smackdown EVER to our current PM, aka Tony The Phony Baloney.

  195. A rude businessman and someone calling me gay: these are the people I murdered today.
    (In my head, obviously)
    (And I have nothing against the gays. It’s just kind of unpleasant when I HAVE TOLD YOU THAT I’M ABROSEXUAL, DUMBASS)

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