?

Yahoo! Answers: A Character Study

A slender young man in despair

Remarked as he shellacked his hair,

"I'd hang myself now

If I only knew how -

Mom hates when I stand on the chair."

I've loved the stars of the earth

Far more than the stars of the sky;

I've touched the stars of the earth -

The stars of the sky are too high.

The stars of the earth stand in rows

And columns of glimmering light.

The stars of the earth in the distance

Flick out, one by one, through the night.

I tap on my star, and it's cold,

But cold like the dew, not the grave.

My star in the sunset is gold;

I stare from my star and I wave.

What are the stars of the earth?

Though some would gladly show this

To their very worst foe,

Most would sooner lose their sons

Than let it go.

Three riddles - there's a connection between their answers!

A) Shadows die quietly.

Few prefer to run.

Two arms point upward,

Reaching for the sun.

B) A tower on his left,

A cleric on his right,

He stood behind his sable men,

And waited for the fight.

"The pale foe advances!"

The words each minion dreads!

So he spurred his horse to action,

And leapt above their heads!

-

Once you've solved the other two, see if you can answer this one in a way that fits the pattern of the answers.

C) Unlike diseases

That strike and move on,

This lingers worst

When its cause is gone.

... well, original in the sense that I wrote them. I've posted them elsewhere before, under a few other names (Kandel, JWWells, etc), so I guess it might be possible to Googlecheat.

1) "The sky has many, many eyes, but in the sea of night

The arrow fired into the gulf flew straight and true and bright;

It sends a thousand missives home, but asks for no reply -

A mind of twisted, shining nerves will lead it to an eye."

2) "View, Side, Text, Sent,

Pare, Cede, Tend, Vent."

3) "Burning moon, Hera's devout,

Data moving in and out."

4) "Unnerving mood that's hard to fake:

Creepy, like a US lake."

5) "Errors we'll own to, if we're wise;

What Gollum runs for exercise."

6) "In the wind and the rain, I lent ______,

And she limped o'er the plain to our plane,

The storm was insane, the noise rattled the brain -

What a beast of a _____!"

7) "The marksman was expert at pistol and ______.

I asked him how he did it - he said it was ______."

8) "The more I know, the longer I live,

The harder I find this is to give.

My wife, whom mostly I adore,

Believes I ought to give it more.

But it's a source of shared distress

That our child won't learn to give it less;

Perhaps a youth is always bolder -

And I've set one up for when he's older.

What is it?"

Here's one I wrote a few days ago:

Hoarded by one, I bring frustration,

Shared by two, I bring elation,

Shared by three, I bring confusion,

When not shared, I am illusion.

NOTE: This was way too easy to write - I'm wondering if I subconsciously stole it from some popular or well-known riddle. Has anybody heard anything like it before? The theme's pretty common, so somebody must have hit on this formula.

In his poem "A Martian Sends a Postcard Home", Craig Raine described human life through the eyes of an alien. Can you identify some of the things the Martian saw?

1) "In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,

that snores when you pick it up.

If the ghost cries, they carry it

to their lips and soothe it to sleep

with sounds. And yet they wake it up

deliberately, by tickling with a finger."

2) "[This] is a room with the lock inside -

a key is turned to free the world

for movement, so quick there is a film

to watch for anything missed."

3) "[...] mechanical birds with many wings

and some are treasured for their markings -

they cause the eyes to melt

or the body to shriek without pain.

I have never seen one fly, but

sometimes they perch on the hand."

4) "[This] is when the sky is tired of flight

and rests its soft machine on ground:

then the world is dim and bookish

like engravings under tissue paper."

Good luck!

Once again, since I wrote these, you won't find them on Google.

1:

He speaks another's voice,

Thinks not, and yet has thought,

His famous choice is not a choice:

He is, and he is not.

He paces through a castle

That is and isn't his;

He usually is not a Dane,

But almost always is.

2:

I was rich, but not well-raised -

Rarely noticed, rarely

Praised.

Seeking, then, to be admired

To the stagelight I

Aspired,

For my own child, scarcely cared -

Not a single tear

I spared.

Ambitious, in a nest of vipers,

Changing costumes, changing

Diapers.

Now she's grown and gone somewhere

Far away. I know

_____.

3:

Before the rain, you'll find that I

Am scarcely seen.

Rain falls, and I burst through my shroud -

But bear no green.

The root or the decaying soil

Serve for my needs;

The wind bears off a billion seeds

That are not seeds.

1. Terror of the veldt, it brings

Deadly sleep on tiny wings.

2. What speeds around an oval track,

And looks the same forward and back?

3. I'm tall and stiff, I drip and sweat,

But I'm a stalwart guy.

Old-fashioned I may be, and yet

I'll shine until I die.

4. The three favorite letters

Of habitual debtors.

5. The merciful man

Is kindly, and shies

From causing undue pain.

But peel off my skin

And gouge out my eyes,

And not even he would complain.

What am I?

Luckless Mr. Lawton

Always ends up in a pinch!

He tied himself a necktie,

But the necktie wouldn't cinch.

He tried to catch a streetcar,

But the streetcar wouldn't pass,

He left his engine running,

And his car ran out of gas.

He's going for a swim now,

In a pool of shining blue,

And if he has his way there,

What will Mr. Lawton do?

Not original in subject, really, but you won't find them by Googling. Ten points to best answer!

I. I draw a spiral in the sun

And eat it up when I am done.

II. The surgeon was ready

And made the first cut.

His partners, unsteady,

Felt weak in the gut,

And soon were unable

To meet doc's demands.

They were not on the table,

Yet lost both their hands!

How can this be?

My first's a line, in room or hair,

My second left an oval's chair,

My third part you most often see,

My fourth's between "was" and "will be."

My fifth we take with jam and toast,

My last is on the minds of most.

My whole, six fellows in a row

Where roving fingers often go.

What am I?