Security and me,
Don't eye to eye always see,
When it makes me,
Take time away from you,
Just to see that a payment goes through,
Layer after layer of security.
Oh how much easier it should be,
For you and me,
To pay a bill or three,
So, there could be more time for you and me,
And the cost added onto the bill for me,
To pay security,
For what it fails to deliver to me,
Would be less than the size of a bee,
Why cant the companies and banks see,
A way to set us all free,
From waking up each day, dreading to see,
How many more layers of security,
Will be adding to the time I spend away from thee
When all we want to do is pay our bill,
and prevent the company we owe from being,
bankrupted by too much security.
Oh why cant they see,
What is obvious to a flea,
And open their doors, when I come with cash in hand,
Begging to pay what they demand,
To keep us all from having to leave this land,
So, I can spend less time trapped in layers of security,
And more time with thee.
.
thru'er
soft diaphanous
damn
black mini dress
mine'nerve
tap
')>
Better requires less of the bitter,
And more of the Guinness.
Better requires less of life on a platter,
And more serious efforts to clean up a mess.
Better requires more reason for a natter,
And less reason for chatter that is meaningless.
Better requires more use of brain matter,
And less use of fixes that are useless.
Better requires more names that are dapper,
And less numbers that give only errors to address.
Better requires wallets that are fatter,
And less taxes for the mad hatter to bless.
Better requires more home runs from the next batter,
And less coaching by those who are clueless.
Better requires less glass to shatter,
And more children to progress.
Better requires empathy in quantity, more than a smatter,
And failure to appreciate the opposite sex, a sign of weakness.
Better requires more waste turned into matter,
And nature, to fear less.
Better requires perfect people to scatter,
And those who strive for better to be free of stress.
Better requires kindness not to clatter,
And envy to be no one's mistress.
Inside too hot,
Outside too cold,
Temperatures on the rise,
Yet in the blink of an eye,
High becomes low,
And our noses give off a red glow.
And our toes no longer good to go.
Yet temperatures among us still rising,
With those who find the cold embracing,
Threatening an uprising,
If those who are for turning up the inside heating,
Don't start compromising.
No wonder bosses turn to drinking,
With employees too cold or too hot to be working.
Local Knowledge,
Will always give you the edge,
On what bets to hedge,
Where best to plant a hedge,
Where not to dredge.
Ask a local and pay no fee,
Get the best info for free,
Even comes with a cup of tea,
And a garden in full bloom to see.
With local input,
You can increase your output,
With no no time out,
To hear the locals shout,
why were we not told about.
If you want long term profit,
Local knowledge will always be a better fit,
And save the need for a costly refit.
Best of all time for more golf will be a given,
So, why not give in,
Meet with the locals at their local Inn,
Put your original plan in the bin,
Giving logic time to settle in.
,
.
yet
return did
hern
ritually
'zif
hern owe'd
my
repeat'did
rip ( he dip ')>
meanz
*yuh know edvard'z lisp
then yuh know thuh title
tiz thuh write...two werdz
in write explicates title
<]')
.
az
thuh firme
soldier
whilst hern scream'd
instruccionez
')>
*so i'll 'splain...
en español, firme meanz; 'at
attention', az in thuh military
<]')
Few but the blind,
Can see the alternatives,
And the few who can see like the blind,
Often find themselves in a bind,
When offering alternatives to the many who are not blind,
But keep their blinkers on,
Making it difficult to see they are not using their scone,
To prevent them walking into an alley that is blind,
Where only few but the blind can see their way clear,
To breathe in some fresh air
To avoid waking up blind to alternatives
That are open, only to those who use their initiatives.
.
i were
we for
were
thuh most part
yeah
me and
mineself
i
were
mind'n mannerz
mine
when she bent
o
o
ohver yer honor
judge
')>
We mince half a million babies a year.
Then riot over the inhuman treatment of a chicken.
That we're about to rip to pieces and devour.
.
they never
shake
slither'n south
slide'n
yourn pretty
excitits
No right minded businessman,
Will cut funding and resources to parts of a their business,
That has proved profitable or is essential to the profitability ,
of another part of their business,
So why do governments with more than one successful businessman,
With proven track records of running a successful business,
Almost always go against conventional wisdom for running a successful
business,
And make cuts across the board without any due diligence regarding,
which government department is making the best return on money,
Provided in the form of tax taken off profitable businesses.
.
'mooch
'mooch nibble
'mooch
nibble nibble nibble
chomp
"(((edvard)))"
')>
.
tap
tap mine
'pon
torso'z back
sliiide
'long torso'z
mine
rusted front
thuh buckle
zipper mine
too
unlock'd kneez
drop'd
.
wishperz
do true
come
this iz living proof
well
you're star
uh
tuh me eve
tap
')>
Introduction
The first pleasure of reading burlesque comes from the gap between what a poem appears prepared to honor and what it actually exposes. A ceremonious voice may praise an absurdly minor inconvenience; a familiar literary manner may be redirected toward shopping, office etiquette, romance, politics, or household disorder. The joke often resides not in a single punch line but in the sustained mismatch between scale, style, and subject.
Reading the community poems side by side reveals how many kinds of laughter that mismatch can produce. One poet may use mock grandeur, another dry understatement, another escalating nonsense, and another humor edged with anger or grief. Some poems invite affectionate recognition, while others sharpen ridicule into social criticism. Voice also changes the effect: a pompous speaker, an innocent observer, and a weary insider can approach similar material yet leave readers with entirely different judgments.
A single example may make burlesque seem dependent on one clever premise. Browse the poems in this collection, however, and you can compare how long each writer sustains the comic frame, where the tonal turn occurs, and whether the ending merely delivers a joke or changes the meaning of everything before it. Read beyond the first example to notice how poets balance imitation with invention, exaggeration with precision, and entertainment with consequence. The richest comparisons ask not only what is being mocked? but also what does the mockery allow the poet to defend, question, or reveal?
Reading Guide
Burlesque rewards an alert reader because its surface performance and underlying attitude are rarely identical. The speaker may sound reverent while the details quietly undermine that reverence, or may sound foolish while exposing the foolishness of a larger system. As you read the community poems, follow both levels at once: the manner being performed and the judgment emerging beneath it. Comparison is especially useful because similar comic devices can produce affection, embarrassment, protest, unease, or simple delight depending on timing and context.
- Identify the mismatch. Notice which elements seem deliberately out of proportion: elevated language applied to a trivial event, casual language applied to authority, or heroic action reduced to petty behavior. This disparity supplies much of the poem's pressure. Ask: What two levels of seriousness has the poet brought into collision?
- Listen to the performed voice. Decide whether the speaker recognizes the absurdity or remains confidently unaware of it. An oblivious speaker can create dramatic irony, while a knowing speaker may sound conspiratorial or satirical. Compare poems by asking: Who understands the joke, and when does the reader understand it?
- Trace escalation. Many successful burlesques enlarge, repeat, or complicate an initial absurdity rather than abandoning it after one joke. Watch how details accumulate and where the poem risks going too far. Ask: Does each new turn intensify the premise, or merely restate it?
- Examine verbal texture. Overripe adjectives, stiff ceremony, blunt diction, internal echoes, and conspicuously polished phrases can all become comic instruments. Sound matters because it makes the adopted manner persuasive enough to recognize. Ask: Which words make the performance audible, and which words puncture it?
- Watch the line breaks and pauses. A break can delay the deflating word, isolate an absurd image, or imitate a solemn cadence before disrupting it. Punctuation can similarly stage hesitation or overconfidence. Compare several poets' approaches by asking: Where is the comic information withheld, released, or allowed to hang in silence?
- Consider the target and the bystanders. Ridicule always directs attention somewhere, even when the poem seems playful. Distinguish between mockery aimed upward at pretension or power and humor that may inadvertently diminish the vulnerable. Ask: Whose assumptions are being exposed, and whom does the poem invite us to stand beside?
- Test the ending. Some conclusions snap shut with deflation; others reveal a serious residue beneath the comedy. A strong close may reverse sympathy or implicate the reader. Ask: Does the last movement merely stop the performance, or does it alter our understanding of its purpose?
When browsing the collection, revisit poems after recognizing their strategy. A second reading often reveals early signals that seemed innocent at first. Those signals show how carefully a burlesque can prepare laughter, judgment, and surprise at the same time.
Writing Tips
Begin a burlesque draft by deciding what tension you want the reader to inhabit, not simply what you want to ridicule. Choose a subject whose public importance, private absurdity, inflated reputation, or neglected consequence creates room for a meaningful mismatch. Then choose a voice and verbal manner capable of sustaining that mismatch. The workshop question is not merely whether the premise is funny, but whether the poem keeps discovering new implications inside it.
- Choose a target with layers. A minor annoyance can become revealing when it exposes vanity, bureaucracy, status, or self-deception. A serious issue can support humor when the comedy clarifies rather than evades its stakes. Before drafting, write down what is ridiculous, what is consequential, and what you do not want the laughter to erase.
- Build from recognizable features, not vague imitation. If you borrow the air of a proclamation, epic speech, advertisement, sermon, manual, or romantic address, select a few telling habits of that mode. Reproduce its confidence, sequence, or vocabulary without mechanically copying every feature. Recognition should serve the poem's argument rather than become a costume displayed for its own sake.
- Give the speaker a motive. A burlesque voice becomes more than a joke-delivery device when it wants admiration, obedience, sympathy, escape, or control. Let that desire shape what the speaker exaggerates and overlooks. The resulting blind spots create richer irony than a narrator who continually explains why everything is absurd.
- Escalate by variation. Do not repeat the same comic equation in every stanza or passage. Increase the stakes, switch the kind of evidence, introduce a contradiction, or allow reality to resist the speaker's account. Productive escalation feels inevitable in retrospect while still surprising the reader.
- Use freedom as compositional pressure. Because the poem is not rescued by a prescribed architecture, pacing must arise from the comic and emotional movement. Decide where the performance needs speed, where a ceremonious delay will heighten anticipation, and where a short line or plain statement should puncture inflation.
- Make images do argumentative work. Replace general claims about foolishness with exact objects, gestures, clothing, sounds, or procedures. A misplaced trophy, a stubborn appliance, or an excessively formal queue can embody an entire hierarchy. Specific images also prevent the poem from becoming a string of interchangeable jokes.
- Control the temperature of ridicule. Beginners sometimes confuse relentless insult with comic force. Decide whether the poem's stance is affectionate, corrective, indignant, grotesque, or darkly resigned, and revise stray phrases that create unintended cruelty. The sharper the target, the more important it is to understand who absorbs the blow.
- Read for the double effect. Perform the draft aloud once in complete seriousness, then again as comedy. If the language cannot support the serious delivery, the imitation may be too flimsy; if no comic fracture becomes audible, the poem may be merely imitative. Mark where a listener is likely to recognize the discrepancy and whether that recognition arrives too early.
During revision, cut explanations that tell readers where to laugh, strengthen sounds that establish the adopted manner, and rearrange lines so each deflation lands cleanly. Check that imagery develops rather than decorates the premise. Finally, test several endings: a sudden collapse, an ironic return to ceremony, or a quiet disclosure of genuine stakes. Keep the ending that enlarges the poem's judgment instead of merely adding its loudest joke.
Interesting Facts
- Apparent freedom increases the burden of selection. Without a required architecture to create momentum, every tonal shift, pause, and repeated device must justify itself. The poet must invent the poem's internal law and teach readers how to hear it while the performance is underway.
- Comic excess works best beside exact observation. Wild exaggeration becomes more convincing when anchored by one accurately noticed gesture or object. That realistic detail gives the reader a foothold, allowing the larger absurdity to reveal how ordinary behavior already contains the seeds of caricature.
- A straight face can be more powerful than a visible wink. When the speaker maintains solemn confidence, readers perform the interpretive work of detecting the mismatch. Too many signals that announce the joke can reduce tension and make the poem feel less trusting of its audience.
- The same premise can protect or attack. Inflating a small domestic mishap may affectionately honor human clumsiness, while deflating official grandeur may expose vanity or power. The device alone does not determine the ethics; direction, context, and collateral targets do.
- Length changes the kind of pleasure. A brief burlesque may depend on swift reversal, whereas a longer one can build a whole false world whose logic becomes increasingly unstable. In longer pieces, variation is crucial because an unchanged joke loses force even when its wording remains clever.
- The memorable residue is not always the punch line. Readers may retain the pompous voice, a grotesquely precise image, or the uncomfortable realization beneath the laughter. A comic ending can entertain immediately, but an altered view of the subject gives the poem a longer afterlife.
- Comparison reveals the form's ethical range. As you read the community poems, notice how different writers distribute sympathy. One may implicate the speaker, another the audience, and another an institution. Those choices show why similar comic strategies can carry sharply different emotional meanings.
Popular Themes
Subject matter and comic method cannot be separated in burlesque: the chosen topic determines what kind of mismatch will feel revealing rather than arbitrary. The possibilities below are literary opportunities, not claims about which subjects occur most often in the collection. Each offers a different way to place inflated language, trivial detail, social performance, and serious consequence under pressure.
- Bureaucracy and official procedure. Forms, meetings, regulations, and ceremonial announcements invite exaggerated dignity because their language can conceal ordinary confusion or unequal power. A poet can let procedural precision become its own comic labyrinth.
- Domestic inconvenience. Cooking failures, repairs, clutter, pets, and minor disputes can receive heroic treatment. The disproportion exposes how quickly private frustration expands to fill a person's emotional horizon, often with affectionate self-recognition.
- Ambition, status, and reputation. Boasting speakers and competitive rituals give poets room to dramatize vanity from within. The strongest versions reveal the insecurity beneath the display rather than relying only on mockery from a safe distance.
- Romantic performance. Courtship clichés, extravagant promises, jealousy, and disappointment can be inflated or abruptly deflated. This subject works especially well when genuine tenderness survives beneath the dismantling of polished romantic poses.
- Consumer desire and advertising. Products can be praised as though they promise salvation, authority, or perfect identity. Borrowed sales language lets the poem expose the gap between manufactured longing and the stubbornly ordinary object being sold.
- Public ceremony and institutional prestige. Awards, speeches, commemorations, and displays of expertise provide recognizable scripts for tonal imitation. A burlesque can ask whether the ceremony honors real achievement or protects an image of importance.
- Fear, failure, and mortality. Dark comedy can approach painful subjects obliquely, making emotional pressure bearable without pretending it is absent. The challenge is to let laughter coexist with vulnerability rather than use humor to cancel it.
- Literary and artistic conventions. Familiar postures of grandeur, melancholy, inspiration, or profundity can become material themselves. Such poems succeed when they understand the convention well enough to question it while still taking artistic effort seriously.
As you browse the poems in this collection, compare writers who begin with related subjects but choose different speakers, scales, and degrees of sympathy. The transformation matters more than the topic alone: one household mishap may become mock tragedy, social critique, affectionate portrait, or a study in self-importance.
Editorial Insights
The central artistic tension in burlesque lies between comic reduction and genuine attention. The poem needs enough seriousness for its distortion to matter, yet enough freedom from solemnity for laughter to unsettle the subject. If ridicule merely dismisses, the poem often becomes thin; if reverence remains untouched, the comic frame becomes ornamental. Memorable work keeps both forces active. Readers laugh at the disproportion while sensing that the exaggeration has identified a real desire, fear, hierarchy, or deception.
Structure feels necessary when it enacts that tension. An adopted ceremonial sequence might become increasingly unable to contain mundane facts; a grand voice might accumulate verbal splendor until one plain image exposes its emptiness. In such cases, pacing, lineation, repetition, and tonal consistency are not decorative signs of cleverness. They create expectation, then determine how and when that expectation is frustrated. Editors notice whether each passage deepens the governing discrepancy. They also notice whether sound reinforces the performed manner: rolling clauses may embody pomposity, clipped statements may administer deflation, and strategic silence may let an absurd claim condemn itself.
Predictability is a frequent weakness. Once readers understand that a trivial object will be treated majestically, the initial premise cannot carry the entire poem. Mechanical escalation, forced archaisms, random exaggeration, or repeated punch lines may demonstrate the device without developing it. Over-explanation is equally damaging because it closes the interpretive space where irony operates. At the other extreme, insufficient context can make the target unclear, leaving readers unable to distinguish purposeful double meaning from merely inconsistent tone. Strong revision asks what changes: the speaker's confidence, the reader's sympathy, the apparent stakes, or the identity of the person being exposed.
Individuality remains visible through angle of vision. Two poets may imitate a similar public manner, yet one attends to bodily embarrassment, another to economic pressure, another to language itself, and another to the tenderness hidden inside folly. Their choices of detail reveal what they value as surely as their targets reveal what they resist. Comparing multiple community poems develops a more discriminating sense of quality because it separates the readily repeatable device from the singular perception. The most accomplished examples do not simply make a serious thing look foolish or a small thing look grand. They use the collision to produce knowledge that neither solemn treatment nor an isolated joke could have reached.
Read, Write & Share
Read several community poems before settling on your sense of what burlesque can accomplish. Compare the speakers, targets, borrowed manners, tonal turns, and endings; notice where laughter remains playful and where it opens into criticism, discomfort, or sympathy. A thoughtful comment can identify the precise moment a poem's comic frame became convincing or unexpectedly meaningful.
Then try composing your own piece. Choose a mismatch worth sustaining, test the voice aloud, and let the humor discover more than the first premise promises. When the draft is ready, publish it on PoetrySoup so other readers can consider how your interpretation converses with the poems already gathered here.
Collection Statistics
This collection contains 753 burlesque poems, providing ample room to compare distinct voices, subjects, comic temperatures, and methods of tonal reversal. Across a collection of this size, readers can encounter poets who follow familiar conventions, adapt them to new purposes, or challenge expectations while preserving a recognizable tension between manner and meaning. Browse widely rather than treating any single poem as definitive; the contrasts between interpretations are part of what makes the collection instructive.
Burlesque Categories
Definition | What is Burlesque in Poetry?
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.