100,000,000,000,000 poems

Prose took the minstrel's verse without a squeeze
Through snobbish growing round her hemline zone
Upon his old oak chest he cuts his cheese
That suede ferments is not at all well known
They both are right not untamed mutterings
That metred rhyme alone can souls enslave
The learning linguist cameramaniac sings
Till firemen come with hose-piped tidal wave
Poetic licence needs no strain or stress
With gravity at gravity's great cog
The colonel's still escutcheoned in undress
We'll suffocate before the epilogue
With marble souvenirs then fill a slum
They're kings we're mammal-cousins hi ho hum


Raymond Queneau

Translation to English by Stanley Chapman
found in "Oulipo Compendium"
Atlas 1998, ISBN 0-947757-96-1

Idea and implementation by Magnus Bodin 1997
Produced in the wonderful country of Sweden.