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Picture of shufitz
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The greatest error ever erred
Is a nice girl with a naughty word.
For naughty words I hold no brief,
They fill my modest heart with grief.
But since it's plainer every day,
That naughty words are here to stay.
At least let's send them back again
To where they come from: namely, men.
For men, although to language prone,
Know when to leave the stuff alone;
The stevedore, before each damn,
Stops to consider where he am;
The lumberjack is careful, too,
Of what he says in front of who;
And if surrounded by the young,
The taxi driver curbs his tongue.
The reason men speak softly thus is
That circumstances alter cusses.
And naughty words scream out like sirens
When uttered in the wrong environs.
But maidens who restrict their hips
Place no such limits on their lips;
Once they have learned a startling Verb,
No tactful qualms their heads disturb;
They scatter Adjectives hither and thence
Regardless of their audience.
And cannot hold a Noun in trust
But have to out with it, or bust,
And that’s why men creep into crannies
When girls play cribbage with their grannies,
And nervous husbands develop hives
When ministers call upon their wives,
And fathers tie themselves in knots
When damsels stoop to caress their tots,
For who knows what may not be heard
From a nice girl with a naughty word?
One truth all womankind nonplusses:
That circumstances alter cusses.

— Ogden Nash, Oh Shucks, Ma’am, I Mean Excuse Me
 
Posts: 2666 | Location: Chicago, IL USAReply With QuoteReport This Post
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You know, I never stopped to think that Ogden Nash must have written scads of poems I've never read/seen/heard of...Where'd you find this?
 
Posts: 6267 | Location: Worcester, MA, USReply With QuoteReport This Post
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I think it was in The Golden Treasury of Ogden Nashery
 
Posts: 6168 | Location: Muncie, IndianaReply With QuoteReport This Post
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Picture of bethree5
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Heh heh, good one, Shufitz. It brought back a 60-yr-old memory: cousins stacked up in cots on the back porch in Indiana, on one of our family’s rare visits to my dad's clan there. [He settled in upstate-NY as a young man.] He and his brother et al old friends were yukking it up inside-- and we were muffling rounds of amazed giggles as we tried to keep count of how many times my dad said “goddam.”
 
Posts: 2605 | Location: As they say at 101.5FM: Not New York... Not Philadelphia... PROUD TO BE NEW JERSEY!Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I thought Wagner was cussing with Gotterdammerung.
 
Posts: 6168 | Location: Muncie, IndianaReply With QuoteReport This Post
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