On Nonsense Verse, from the book "Here We Be. Where Be We?" Nonsense Poem: "The Year Nineteen Hundred and No One Knows"

 

Nonsense Becoming Sense Becoming Nonsense Sense

Probably the most underrated kind of literary writing is nonsense verse. People think it’s just silly and nothing else but silly. But great nonsense verse has a way of showing language on the verge of becoming nonsensical madness, which then, somehow, creeps up onto the verge of making sense, and then—if everything works out perfectly—crawls over into some higher realm of transcendent truth.

 

The Year Nineteen Hundred and No One Knows

In the year Nineteen Hundred and No One Knows

The stars may have frozen; the moon may have froze;

Do you know? Does he know? Do we know? Who knows

What life will be like in Nineteen No One Knows?

 

That poem was, obviously, written before the turn of the century and the turn of the millennium. For we’re now into the year 2020 + No One Knows.

In the year Nineteen Hundred and No One Knows

We may have departed for places one goes.

Do we know? Does anyone know? No. Who knows

Where we could all be in Nineteen No One Knows?

Does anyone know what it’s like where one goes,

If one doesn’t last till Nineteen No One Knows?

You mean no one but no one but nobody knows?

Then I think I’ll stay here with blue bows on my toes,

 

In the sun, wearing bows on my toes and no clothes,

Not no clothes but just bows on my big crooked toes,

And I’ll bask in the sun without worries or woes,

Till the year Twenty Hundred and Nobody Knows.

[Excerpt from the book by U.R. Bowie, HERE WE BE. WHERE BE WE? IN THE SHITSTORM YEAR OF 2020]