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Limerick contest! Win a MACHINE OF DEATH limited edition hardcover

Rob Beschizza at 12:01 pm Mon, Apr 4, 2011

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mod-combo-cards-1.jpg UPDATE: Winner picked! Machine of Death is a collection of stories about people who know how they will die. The titular device can tell you, from just a tiny sample of your blood, how you'll step off the mortal coil. Infallible but often maddeningly cryptic, its readings inspire fear, hope, despair, elation, madness, love, and even -- sometimes -- giddy anticipation. This bestselling fiction collection, containing 34 stories about worlds in which the Machine is a reality, has just been released as a limited-edition, hand-numbered hardcover, packaged with an embroidered patch, a personalized and embossed Death Prediction Certificate, and one or more Death Prediction Cards. We've got a signed set to give away! All you have to do is post a limerick to our comments. Sex is so played out as a limerick subject: this one is all about death, destiny or impending doom. How are you going to die? What would your prediction read? Or -- dare we ask -- the prediction of a salty old wag from Nantucket? Our favorite will get the hardback set, and another winner will be picked at random. I'd say "good luck!", but what use is it in a determininstic universe? Previously: • Machine of Death Amazon campaign infuriates Glenn Beck • Machine of Death goes Creative Commons • How would you live if you knew you were going to die?

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Eurovision 2013: An American in London

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  • michiexile

    Because I would not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me
    I asked that pale old scally-wag “What is there then for me?”
    His bony eye stared down ice-cold
    “Your death comes from a dark green mold
    That grows and festers on the bread your mother gives to thee.”

  • joelcb

    The thoughts of death would alight
    While reading Edgar Allan Poe at night
    Thoughts of grisly decapitation
    Or gruesome strangulation
    But the end came with toast and marmite

  • catgrin

    The Buddhist monk’s card made him grin.
    It said one simple word, just AGAIN.
    I did please him so
    That he was in the know
    That he ignored the oncoming train.

  • snakedart

    A king of intellect great
    Made a game of outwitting Fate.
    But, alas, like a stone
    He fell from his throne
    As a chill voice whispered, “checkmate.”

  • Anonymous

    There once was a man from Nantucket
    Who was fated to death via bucket
    He thought he was safe
    His only fear he might chafe
    In his career riding horses who would “buck it”

  • Anonymous

    WolfDead15
    Not for you the drowned while sailin’
    Nor the end result of ailin’,
    The way you’ll die
    Is from on high,
    When you’re shot by Sarah Palin

  • timetraveler

    There once was a Man From Earth
    who died after experiencing Birth
    It took such a long time
    he had ages to opine
    the loss of Love, Memory and Worth

  • RadioFreeUSA

    Learning your death is a gas
    For soon you will know how you pass
    “Eat a packet of seeds,
    then your bottom will bleed”
    And a pumpkin comes out of your…

  • pounana

    “Consider the soul’s immortality”
    For the church is a theme of centrality
    Yet it’s staggering wealth
    (So at odds with the health
    Of its subjects) implies gross venality…

  • Elmo Gearloose

    Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday,
    Today i-is Friday, Friday.
    We-we-we so excited.
    We so excited.
    We gonna have a ball today!

    Rebecca Black sings in limerick form! Hahaha!

  • Shrike96

    Death comes for me tomorrow, I thought wryly,
    I won’t face the Reaper meek and shyly
    Hey, I have nothing left to lose.
    So I am breaking into Fox News,
    To take a dump on the desk of Bill O’Reilly!

  • zapgunner

    Robots are always best
    Even at the M.O.D. Test
    Inscribed on each butt
    Screwed under a nut
    Is the date and time of their rest.

  • gjtorikian

    There once was a contest online
    Whose prize I wished to be mine
    As I typed out my entry
    I knew that in a century
    I’d be buried with that gift so divine

  • Anonymous

    A charming old lady from France
    Was eager to learn how to dance
    But she fell off the pier
    and now we cannot see’er
    So we’re pretty sure she’s got no chance.

  • HotPepperMan

    A machine tells after your born
    How you’ll die but don’t be forlorn.
    With a sense of forboding
    My paper said “Ode-ing”
    But I saved myself with a unicorn…

  • Robert

    She left the Machine with a glower.
    Her printout said only “Cold shower”.
    So she took baths,
    for a year and a half,
    ’til her boyfriend, frustrated, done shot ‘er.

  • Anonymous

    Old Smokey, the Yellowstone Miser
    Cooked all of his food in a geyser
    He made apple sass
    With some Hydrogen gas
    And now he’s much stiffer – but wiser!

  • Anonymous

    Mixing it up with a haiku:

    Death by catapult
    So that’s what the temptress meant
    by “let’s have a fling”

    -scg

  • sweet patina

    Once departed, detractors will say,
    I left quite a mess in the way,
    But it’s known among friends
    That life always ends
    Like it started: in medias res.

  • Kingazaz

    It said I would be torn asunder.
    What part of my soul did it plunder?
    Through my life I shall fend.
    From many hurts I shall mend.
    In the end we will all be plowed under.

  • lost robot

    There once was a girl from Eugene
    Her own death the machine had foreseen.
    So when the moment arrived,
    She said “Oh well” and sighed
    and quietly OD’d on Morphine.

  • quoick

    I consulted a machine in Nantucket
    To find how I would kick the bucket
    It’s Diebold OS
    Meant it was anyone’s guess
    As you could us any stick drive to fuck it.

  • Afflictiv

    The thought was enough to consume him,
    For when they arrive to exhume him,
    they’ll find to their shock,
    as they search for his cock,
    that a badger, most rabid, had doomed him.

    Probably a honey badger.

  • pounana

    Fame found the young man quite unbidded,
    and left him creatively fridgid,
    so the boy from Seattle
    gave up on his battle
    (though some still INSIST Courtney did it…)

  • Anonymous

    There once was a man.

  • Anonymous

    There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.
    I dunno why she swallowed that fly,
    Perhaps she’ll die.

    There was an old lady who swallowed a spider,
    That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
    She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
    But I dunno why she swallowed that fly -
    Perhaps she’ll die.

    There was an old lady who swallowed a bird;
    How absurd, to swallow a bird!
    She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
    That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
    She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
    But I dunno why she swallowed that fly -
    Perhaps she’ll die

    There was an old lady who swallowed a cat.
    Imagine that, she swallowed a cat.
    She swallowed the cat to catch the bird …
    She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
    That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
    She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
    But I dunno why she swallowed that fly
    Perhaps she’ll die

    There was an old lady who swallowed a dog.
    What a hog! To swallow a dog!
    She swallowed the dog to catch the cat…
    She swallowed the cat to catch the bird …
    She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
    That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
    She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
    But I dunno why she swallowed that fly
    Perhaps she’ll die.

    There was an old lady who swallowed a goat.
    Just opened her throat and swallowed a goat!
    She swallowed the goat to catch the dog …
    She swallowed the dog to catch the cat.
    She swallowed the cat to catch the bird …
    She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
    That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
    She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
    But I dunno why she swallowed that fly
    Perhaps she’ll die.

    There was an old lady who swallowed a cow.
    I don’t know how she swallowed a cow!
    She swallowed the cow to catch the goat…
    She swallowed the goat to catch the dog…
    She swallowed the dog to catch the cat…
    She swallowed the cat to catch the bird …
    She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
    That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
    She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
    But I dunno why she swallowed that fly
    Perhaps she’ll die.

    The card read, the paper coarse:
    SWALLOWING A HORSE

  • RolandBarfs

    Ok, beat this!

    —

    Old Schrödinger once had a cat,
    in a poisonous box it had sat.
    It might have been cooked
    but nobody looked
    so now no one’s quite sure where it’s at.

  • lmaoaml

    There once was a limerick writer
    Whose days looked brighter and brighter
    Until he got fired
    Because he aspired
    To end all his pieces with “orange”

  • Tdawwg

    There was once a death machine,
    vacuum tubes and cathode rays were its scene:
    it became self-aware
    and half on a dare
    flashed “Obsolescence” on its flickering screen.

  • Anonymous

    There was a Bavarian lancer
    Who fell deep in love with a dancer
    They’d court and they’d woo
    Till he got run through
    And she died of ovarian cancer

  • Anonymous

    There once was a man from St. Ives
    Who got stung in the arm by a bee.
    He thought it a wasp
    But then discovered he erred
    And knew he’d soon die of anaphylaxis.

  • Nemo1

    I’d just taken off for Tortuga,
    The caviar served was Beluga,
    Imagine my dread
    when the machine’s card read:
    “Death by Ooga Booga!”

  • Wendell

    Through the painted desert you’ll drive,
    And keeping below 85,
    You’ll still earn derision
    Dying in a collision
    That Wile E. Coyote’d survive

  • Teastiles

    Six months I’ll be dead, it’s a pity,
    Wearing diapers and tubes, life is shitty.
    But thanks to new law
    I’ll pour drugs down my maw
    And die, at last, with dignity.

  • w1znerd

    A classic:

    An eccentric old gas man named Peter
    While looking about for the meter
    Touched a leak with his light
    Then he rose out of sight
    And as anyone who knows anything about poetry can tell you:
    He also ruined the meter.

    They are not Limericks, but this page of Little Wille poems will delight readers with a macabre sense of humor. For example:

    Willie, I regret to state,
    cut his sister into bait.
    We miss her when it’s time to dine,
    but Willie’s fish taste simply fine.

    Or, my favorite:

    Little Willie hung his sister
    She was dead before we missed her.
    Willie’s always up to tricks,
    Ain’t he cute? He’s only six.

    The originals were penned by one, Harry Graham. My father used to recite one written by his father:

    Willie, in a dirty diaper
    Carried home a deadly viper.
    At the funeral, Uncle Ned said,
    Too bad, the snake is dead.

  • ArchitectMurphy

    The etymologist misconstrued,
    Wore magnets but were otherwise nude,
    Said on his last breath,
    “Expect Ironic Death”
    And by knives was ferrous-ishly pursued.

  • Anonymous

    Death Machine grew so bored one day
    That it started to hum and sway
    Bumped the edge of a shelf
    To print a fate for itself
    And wondered what had vertebrae

  • bartleby

    Queequeg and his pal Ish did stick
    Ahab’s whale with a harpooner’s trick
    The Captain did wail
    Of his joy in detail
    Queequeg groaned, “What a great white dick.”

  • Anonymous

    The Machine told each of us our fate.
    To some, this wasn’t so great.
    Some questioned life’s meaning,
    and with reason careening,
    It sparked existential debate.

  • w1znerd

    A Willie poem for chemists:

    Little Willie’s dead and gone.
    His face we’ll see no more.
    For what he thought was H2O
    was H2SO4.

  • lmaoaml

    There once was a manic depressive
    Who experienced a strong obsolescence
    So he leapt thirty stories
    Right onto 6 corgis
    Blood splashing botched his dive impressive.

  • Ghen

    Ghenwa I do admire
    With a passion from the fire
    Our time is short
    So we shag for sport
    In her arms I shall expire.

  • lentilstew

    There once was a man from Van Nuys
    Whose blood drew a tale of demise
    His finger withdrew
    And his courage did, too
    Unread on the ground, his slip lies

  • Saprophyte

    Death is quite painful and sudden
    Eyes pop when he starts to bludgeon
    All for spilled wine on his rug
    Tossed in a hole that he dug
    How sad, now my corpse is well trodden

  • Johnx

    There is a ghoul in a mausoleum,
    Who will tell you if you ever see him,
    “I may be a necrophile,
    but it gives me a smile
    to feel cold fingers on my perineum.”

  • Anonymous

    A power line ‘bater was I…
    Ne’er fearing a fall or a fry.
    But one day I slipped.
    The lines touched my tip.
    Twas a shocking manner to die.

  • shathaniel

    The Machine told us each of our fate.
    To many, this wasn’t so great.
    Some questioned life’s meaning,
    And with reason careening,
    It sparked existential debate.

  • wazzareth

    A Nantucket fellow named Bob
    Had a painful and swollen old knob
    Severe Priapism
    Drained the blood from within him
    And now by his grave, his wife sobs

  • irksome

    This book, my demise it sets.
    Therefore I can have no regrets.
    In a tone oh so hushed
    it insists I be crushed
    by an over-weight monk with Tourettes.

  • Andy

    Whenever I blow out the light,
    The Boogie Man gives me a fright.
    To avoid getting bit,
    My candle stays lit,
    ‘Til I’m consumed in a fire one night.

  • Anonymous

    In chapter 1, on the mantle a gun,
    And the man who drew “BULLET” did shun
    all violence, living clean
    and died during a movie, Steve McQueen
    Cause of death: a horrible pun.

  • Anonymous

    A plugged left anterior descending
    His pulse would quite soon be ending
    Plucked his cell from his vest
    To cry “Pain in my Chest”
    His smart phone chose then to stop sending.

  • Goorpy

    They said that standing was forbidden.
    The danger, in darkness, was hidden.
    But I just wasn’t countin’
    On Disney’s Space Mountain
    to be last ride I’ll have ridden

  • YarbroughFair

    There once was a strange man named Binky
    With a disturbing taste for men and inky
    One day the headlines read
    About a man they found dead
    Who bit the tattoo off a large mans winky

  • Leopold Stotch

    They say that nobody knows
    How your life will come to a close
    If your predicting then quit
    Because who gives a shit
    As Vonnegut said “so it goes…”

  • Nemo1

    A machine that could tell how you die
    but not when and not where and not why
    would bother the heck
    out of poor old Glenn Beck
    ’cause he’d have one more reason to cry.

  • ChiGiant

    A machine that predicts ones demise
    it’s inventor was not very wise.
    For the knowledge you gain
    just does not pertain
    if you seek it while in disguise.

  • Colin Matthew

    There’s a heavy feeling down in my guts
    That entering this contest is slightly nuts.
    Because, can’t you see
    I use only a PC.
    My slip had read “paper cuts”.

  • teedammit

    Don’t think of your death as a loss;
    We float on Life’s river like dross
    In a dingy of skin
    That lets water in
    And you sink as you’re rowing across.

  • Anonymous

    I’m a German/Irishman by birth
    You could say that I know what a beer’s worth
    So let it be said
    When I end up dead
    It’ll be from an OD of mirth

  • kofi_annanymous

    There once was a man from Belize
    Who feigned a most deadly disease.
    He was quite surprised, after so many lies,
    When it ended with only a sneeze.

  • Anonymous

    On the eastside even the florist packs heat
    i wear out the steeltoes on my feet
    They day I was hired in EMS
    They said “here’s your bullet-proof vest”;
    God’s grocery’s selling rotten meat.

  • petertrepan

    BoingBoing dot com asked how I
    Would behave if I knew I would die
    Well, we’ve all got to go
    So I will, and I know,
    So I’d do what I’m doing. Goodbye!

  • Nefarius Dakota

    There once was a man from Ukraine
    Who went out at night, in the rain.
    He was eaten by zeds
    But woke up in his bed
    And had the funniest craving for brains.

  • druse

    At the time when my death was pending
    By a bird that was quickly descending
    Oxygen depleted in its artery
    Cause he suddenly choked on a potter bee
    And it wasn´t my life that was ending

  • Subdrill

    Illuminated by the glow of its screen,
    There was no doubt what the words could mean:
    “Because you’re a klutz,
    You’ll die from papercuts
    Off a printout from a death-guessing machine.”

  • line_voltage

    so you say we’re shit out of luck
    that the book says we’re pretty much fucked
    well i hope death will be
    as important to me
    as the book is to your miserable fluff

  • Anonymous

    A slippery oyster I ate
    Had pleaded with me from the plate,
    “I do not deserve
    This death as hors d’oeuvre.
    This is not my idea of a date!”

  • DanR

    It looks like the scales were tipped,
    When in front of that bus I was tripped.
    The wheels were heavy and brutal,
    Turning my brains into creamy wet strudel,
    And now I lie dead in this crypt.

  • groceryliszt

    Parents said it would help my fame grow
    Now suicide’s the only option I know
    A ghastly last end…
    I’m Rebecca Black’s friend!
    Why did I agree to be in that video!

  • Red

    As Death comes about to meet,
    I see him standing by my feet.
    But I rolled and laughed
    As he thought I was daft;
    He’s still pantless as he left in defeat.

  • Giblet

    I thought that my mother was kidding
    I refused to submit to her bidding
    My eyes start to glisten
    I know now I should listen
    “Keep your hands in the cart and stay sitting”

  • DanR

    I imagined my head was quite level,
    So why did I deal with the devil?
    When he came for my soul,
    After I died on the bowl,
    He looked a little like Aaron Neville.

  • Ito Kagehisa

    Hugo Pinero built a machine
    insurance companies said was obscene
    I asked Hugo to read me
    to find how God would speed me
    but he said my end couldn’t be seen

  • mhsenkow

    To conservatives Obama is the one.
    End of days, he is Satan’s son.
    He’s cool, black and couth.
    So it must be the truth.
    So his presidency must be undone.

    But wait, there’s another who’s more fit.
    Her words make the liberals spit.
    Media laps at her discord.
    And her terrible tea-party horde.
    The antichrist, its a brown-bunned old ditz.

  • jacobwitt

    There once was a fellow from Kent,
    Who didn’t quite care how he went,
    so he got quite a shock,
    when pecked to death by a cock,
    as he’d given up chicken for lent!

  • De-Money

    One night, I awoke from a dream
    Whose subject was rather obscene
    I dreamed that I died
    But now I’m alive
    Or–at least–I once was, it seems.

  • nr

    An anachronistic machine
    Appeared in the Pleistocene.
    It spat out a chit
    That read “In Tar Pit”.
    The brontosaur sank with a scream.

  • Anonymous

    Saw a creepy old man dressed in black
    When he walked, his knees clicky-clacked
    When he crooked his bone finger
    I didn’t linger
    I turned and fled his attack.

  • AlDaFi

    There once was a man with a blade
    He sliced and he slashed at his maid
    She dodged and she ducked,
    But oh, she was f*cked,
    No matter how much she prayed.

  • CraigL

    Birth through the point we become self-aware,
    Life feels so random, capricious, unfair,
    Make uncertainty stop,
    With a single red drop,
    Wisdom embodied in Death’s final stare.

  • jacquesphoto

    There was once a man who liked sinning,
    Till finally Death came a-grinning,
    He was wearing a bowler,
    asked, ‘are you bi-polar?’
    and Charlie said: ‘I am bi-winning!’

  • uncleben

    Deathclock.com says that I’m done
    May 25th, twenty five one
    More days I can live
    if I get active
    and get off of this damn chair cushion.

  • YarbroughFair

    A Machine of Death used to crush heads
    Sits idle in a clearing of sheds
    The locals pray
    That maybe some day
    A family shows up asking for beds

  • YarbroughFair

    Death by a million paper cuts
    Buckets of blood and steaming guts
    Caused by loose pages
    Of a book by Sages
    Now on sale at Starbucks

  • gravytop

    There once was a man named McMurkin
    Addicted to jerkin his gherkin
    Said his wife “you! McMurkin!
    By jerkin your gherkin
    You’re shirkin’ your firkin’
    You bastard!

  • YarbroughFair

    There once was a man named Walt
    Who battled a craving for malt
    He was quite thuggish
    And moved somewhat sluggish
    And died in a mound of salt

  • Noims

    Your life is a short-lived hello
    A chance to transform what we know
    But you’ve got to be quick
    You’ll grow old or get sick
    Death will let someone else have a go

  • YarbroughFair

    There once was a man with flavor
    for his buxom young sweet neighbor
    He climbed her wall
    And proceed to fall
    Upon her husbands rusty saber

  • Marktech

    THE CLEAN ONE

    To Death I would not acquiesce:
    I issued a challenge at chess.
    I knew I was doomed
    When he sat down and boomed
    “‘The Seventh Seal’? True, more or less.”

    THE FEEELTHY ONE

    A nympho saw sex as a schism
    Of free will and determinism.
    She enjoyed penetration
    But went to damnation
    By choking on excess of jism.

  • mhsenkow

    On twitter limericks suck
    Too short and small, you get stuck
    So when I tweeted one day
    I couldn’t think what to say
    I choked, and died in th

  • lobito

    For whatever reason it may be,
    there is a sadness about me.
    It may be due to knowing the the end of the world,
    will come at the hands from which it unfurled.
    Or the fact that I can’t see.

    - Blind Boy Billy

  • iskelton

    There was a carnivorous nation
    That wished to consume all creation
    But the vitals’ remains
    Sent such fat to their veins
    They soon sizzled themselves in cremation.

    =========
    Go vegan!
    =========

  • beingbrad

    in my soul it be burning forever
    some snickered, some sneered, but not Trevor
    nah, he knew (so did I)
    that each one hadda die,
    as they prayed, they were burned, ain’t we clever?

  • YarbroughFair

    The Machine of Death was a locals kink
    The beast a’ready and prepared to drink
    He sharpened the blades
    And lined up the spades
    And called a plumber to fix his blood-clogged sink

  • tobiasaurusrex

    Jackson Pollock was quite an alcoholic,
    Though bravely managed to live booze free,
    He then painted with drips,
    But reverted to sips,
    And soon drove his poor truck through a tree.

    [The meter is correct with conversational pronunciation, where we pronounce "Pollock" not as "Paw-lock", but "Pawl'k", and likewise "alcoholic" is "alcohol'c". Similarly we have "brav'ly" and "manag'd".]

  • Noims

    (Can’t resist the last line)

    The reaper will come, you may sigh
    You won’t get that one last goodbye
    But don’t be annoyed
    You can know schadenfreude
    With strange aeons even death may die

  • mhsenkow

    On twitter limericks suck
    Too short and small, you get stuck
    So when I tweeted one day
    I couldn’t think what to say
    I choked, and died in th

  • Johnny Trash

    My doctor’s not one to be shying
    Away from the truth, or denying.
    I said, “Doc, how’s my cancer”
    And this was his answer:
    “It’s fine but the rest of you’s dying!”

  • YarbroughFair

    There once was a vain woman named Cher
    With locks so long it hung down to there
    Tangled up in a passing bus
    She screamed “Oh! My tress might muss!”
    And chopped of her head instead of her hair

  • kiltreiser

    One night as I’m out for a food run
    I’ll come face to face with a live one
    One shot to the head
    As a dodo – I’m dead
    Who knew zombies could use a machine gun?

  • DanR

    Climbing into the chimney with care,
    To delight my five children down there,
    I dressed up all in red,
    But landed hard on my head,
    Death sure destroys Christmas cheer.

  • Afflictiv

    One more, this time a two-parter.

    Part 1

    Determined to prove that thing wrong,
    that his death would be painful, and long,
    He stood right on the side,
    and with fire in his eyes,
    he let go with a smile and a song

    Part 2

    He awoke in a hospital bed,
    It was just as that damned thing had said,
    He would live out his days,
    in incredible pain,
    from a near-fatal blow to the head.

  • YarbroughFair

    Once there lived a woman named Minx
    Who fought a craving for paper and inks
    She killed a librarian
    An octogenarian
    For refusing to lend her a book about drinks

  • DJBudSonic

    OK here’s one more try…

    My death card is really a doozy,
    Just reading it makes me feel woozy.
    Still, you won’t catch me moaning,
    complaining or groaning…
    When it comes to Death, who can be choosy?

  • OrionObrien

    From youth, to ancient infirm,
    We span but a limited term.
    We all have a date,
    So why should we hate
    That Death has called to confirm?

  • Anonymous

    no doubt about death, come what may
    please love, mold a cup from my clay
    if ever you thirst
    just drink of me first
    a kiss from my lips, should I stray

  • Clyde the Penguin

    The issue of how I’ll demise
    Is one that I often surmise.
    When I take my last breath
    I would like Mister Death
    To pop up and shout out “SURPRISE!”

  • LeakyBucket

    Death at the hands of a mob,
    Incited by my bloody gob,
    Was a glorious start,
    but then fell apart,
    I end with a piss, moan and sob.

  • Anonymous

    A man learned his heartbeat would still tick
    Till it stopped in the midst of a a limeri-

  • Anonymous

    I once was a young living soul,
    until that fateful day’s stroll,
    my predicted demise,
    I often despised,
    until I fell down that manhole.

  • Anonymous

    you might think this is sort of a joke
    but I’ve always known I would choke
    I wake in the night
    in anxiety and fright
    it’s like me epiglottis is broke

    my mates say give up the Smoke
    but I needs that one daily toke
    I’ll be found in me bed
    stone cold and already dead
    even though I will much rather have woke

    g

  • Anonymous

    a grayed man sat on a bench downtown
    eyes fixed while the mad world loomed around
    the pigeons crept near
    and ants climbed his ear
    the tsunami of old age had crashed down

  • YarbroughFair

    My partner Duane, an electrician, begged me write one for him. Should I make sure he has a will?

    There once was an electrician named Duane
    Who pranced around town with a copper cane
    One day in the night
    It caught on a light
    And fried him good in the pouring rain

  • Ang

    there was a death telling machine
    Spelt on a card, death yet unseen
    and upon it it read:
    “A wandering bobsled”
    Now, what in the world does that mean?

  • Anonymous

    There once were two lovers in July.
    Who were public with their privates, not shy.
    They decided to get twice the lift
    Have sex on the edge of a cliff.
    So sad they had to fuck off and die.

    -&rew

  • Anonymous

    A banker from Independence, Missouri
    Bought all the ammo he could carry.
    He set off on the Trail,
    But you know without fail,
    That soon he will Have Died of Dysentery.

  • cap10wow

    so, who won?

  • Ang

    There was an existentialist
    Who often asked why we exist
    One day, came a Machine
    Predicting the unseen
    “Ah,” He said, “you’re a Calvinist.”‘

  • YarbroughFair

    There once was a crazy woman named Shirley
    Who always called a plumber bright and early
    Soon he let out a resounding yipe
    “A blood clot has fallen from the pipe!”
    And she made quick work of him in a hurry

  • Antinous / Moderator

    Since I’m ineligible anyway, here’s a limerick meditation on death.

    A poet romantic called Bryant,
    As a teen was a keen mental giant.
    He dashed off death’s synopsis,
    Termed the verse Thanatopsis
    Before Emerson waxed self-reliant.

  • Anonymous

    Now I may not be Nostradamus,
    but death is most always upon us.
    Whether old or a teen
    death will surely be seen.
    For in death we are always anon’mous.

  • Ang

    There was a death telling machine
    Predicting deaths vague and obscene
    It would print out a card,
    Leave the user quite jarred
    As they chewed over “Death By Spleen”

  • SomeGuy

    There once was a chap named SomeGuy
    who was pondering how he might die.
    His mate asked, “Have you seen
    a book called ‘The Machine?’”
    He said, “No, but I’ll give it a try”.

  • recognizer

    Beholding one’s true mortal fate,
    is dispiriting, no matter the date,
    once foretold, it’s traumatic,
    all too melodramatic,
    to think of oneself as “the late”.

  • qwanderer

    Got my card, and it honestly said
    “You’ll be bopped on the nose until dead.”
    Playing games with my cheetah,
    I usually beat her,
    But not after that has been read.

  • Chentzilla

    I see, someone beat me to the idea of killing the most Boing Boing writers in a single limerick (By the way, only 3? I think you can do better, people!).
    Well, how about that:

    There once lived a maker called Cory,
    Who said: “Poesy, Alice, don’t worry”,
    As he put his hand into
    A possessed 3D-printer…
    His unmaking was slow and gory.

  • Esmer

    Magic broom
    cackle and monkey fly
    but none can save you
    when a Kansas farm girl
    drops a house on your head
    for killer shoes red
    it is your time to die.

  • mediatinker

    She knew all her lives had been past -
    Nirvana next – this was her last!
    Today was the day;
    Just one step away!
    The 29 bus hit her fast.

  • YarbroughFair

    A nice astronaut Robert L. Behnken
    Who thought he had space sickness we reckoned
    Sipping his orange tang
    He saw an orangutang
    And died thinking he was Albert the Second

  • Flint_Paper

    This limerick was brought to you by Existentialist Philosophy: For when you want to be unemployable _and_ horribly, horribly aware of your own mortality.

    We’re so confident we can go far:
    Get a job! Own a house! Buy a car!
    But according to Sartre
    We’re just playing a part
    By engaging in such mauvaise foi.

    (Hell yes I rhymed with ‘Sartre’ with ‘part’. That’s a totally legitimate way of pronouncing it, dammit!)

    • SamSam

      I’m more interested in the rhyme of “foi” with “car.” That’s quite a Boston accent!

  • Anonymous

    To smash the simple atom
    was all mankind’s intent
    And any day, the atom may
    return the compliment.

  • Anonymous

    I will die from a blow to the head,
    My face with a bruised-in boot tread,
    My beating deserved,
    Say rhyme-readers unnerved
    By the last line.

  • ChicaMaria

    There’re razors, gas, acid and drugs,
    And virus or guns could stain the rugs,
    Consider the mess,
    When under final duress,
    Dirty departures are for squashed bugs. 

  • S1s3but0

    A sloppy decorator from Maine,
    would die from an overdose of paint.
    The washing machine,
    he had not foreseen,
    His last time he didn’t leave a stain.

  • bic

    Skip Saunders was a sleepwalking old man
    Who dreamed he was a samauri in Japan
    He killed his cat Larry
    Then performed harikiri
    All the while sitting on the can

  • MikeBB

    There was a young Scotsman from Neth
    who was deadly afraid of Death
    so wearing only a kilt
    and a one-legged stilt
    he prayed he’d never be kill’t.

  • YarbroughFair

    With a death card I did try a trick
    Out of turn I made my last pick
    Another player
    Said “We should slay her!”
    And made me choke on the whole deck

  • dexter121uk

    i played with death by choosing to live
    i uncocked the gun and chose to forgive
    i wiped away a tear and sweat from my head
    heading out of my front door with a sudden feeling of dread
    it was a lorry that took me out that fine day swerving to miss a cat it hit me instead

  • Anonymous

    Some think that life is overrated
    They leave this great feast hardly sated
    Might I recommend?
    Be careful my friend:
    Don’t eat the sushi that’s outdated.

  • Anonymous

    A young time explorer named Fist
    Went through time with a flick of his wrist
    Without any bother
    He killed his grandfather
    And found that he didn’t exi

  • cg

    If Republicans win the day
    And Medicare goes away
    They’ll get sick and decrepit
    With no one to clean their shit
    We’re dead because we couldn’t pay

  • Cybe

    I read the results with surprise,
    The blood test of how everyone dies.
    How ironic the causation,
    Blood test needle contamination.
    Macabre humor in a fiction book’s guise.

  • Anonymous

    Far away from Australia I flew
    When the paper marked “OUTBACK” I drew.
    Now the irony’s clear
    As I lie bleeding here-
    I’ve been hit by a damned Subaru.

    • Anonymous

      Huzzah! Someone has mastered the iambic!

  • Astragali

    I think: To believe in determinism
    Is just an extreme form of masochism.
    Does the thought of free will
    Give an unending chill?
    (Please forgive me: I’m well-versed in cynicism.)

  • Anonymous

    I’m a man who lives life with care
    To do wrong to another I couldn’t bear
    (I don’t even swat flies).
    So imagine my surprise
    When my slip read Electric Chair

  • LuckyJim

    on a very fine day in July
    someone wished to know how he would die
    so he found a machine
    put his finger in, clean
    and pulled out a bloody big lie

  • Bartacus

    My Death-Predict’s “Knife through the skull.”
    As I de-knife my kitchen I mull:
    If I dodge the planned hearse
    Will my death just hurt worse?
    Like that sad weird-faced cyclops in Krull?

  • LuckyJim

    there was an old pig in a sty
    that was incapable of telling a lie
    just like the machine
    which the whole world had seen
    he could tell people how they would die

  • Francis Heaney

    A man who’d been told that his doom
    Would leave spatters all over his room,
    Not admitting defeat,
    Said, “I’ll live on the street!”
    But before he could leave, he went boom.

  • qualmann

    The Machine said to man in Nantucket,
    “You’ll choke on the length when you suck it”.
    He said with a grin
    As he wiped off his chin,
    “It’s fate, so I won’t try to buck it”.

  • Anonymous

    There once was a book about dying
    I read it and ended up crying
    Because I found out
    I’d be killed by a girl scout
    For taking her cookies and lying

  • Kethos

    There once was a man from this nation
    who though he felt much trepidation,
    to a Machine he went,
    asked ‘How will it end?’
    and found out — Liquidification.

  • jean m. peck

    The machine said webcomics misread
    Would cause him too soon to be dead
    He watched XKCD
    For death’s furtive decree
    But twas uttered by T. Rex instead

  • hinges

    This is a collection of fictions
    containing a set of depictions
    of a device that can guess
    the exact cause of your death
    and the results of these unerring predictions.

  • sgv

    She came to take names
    Like the scariest of dames
    But i did like a zombie
    Said darling get on me
    Gimme some brains!

  • LuckyJim

    there once was a woman on meth
    who used the machine for her death
    she climbed up inside
    locked the door, then she cried
    when it told her she’d run out of breath

  • DSouthwick

    We all must leave this world
    Some jump, while others are hurled
    When nerds take this trip
    At least we can quip
    “Mirab, with sails unfurled”

  • archives por vida

    After the scheming, plotting, and hustling,
    He really hadn’t been all that cunning.
    Oh, those last words were throaty
    From that wily Coyote,
    “I really should have seen that ‘Rock’ coming.”

  • zume

    Machine of Death Amazon campaign infuriates Glenn Beck:
    “There’s nothing in the world that would make me cut my neck!”
    “How would you live if you knew you were going to die?
    “I would dance sing and cry,
    “But avoid frisbees, knife-throwers, and the world shuriken championships in Uttrecht.

  • LuckyJim

    there once was a bloke with a sty
    who couldn’t see through his right eye
    twice fell down a ravine
    so he used the machine
    saying I just want to know how I die

  • mikelipino

    While I certainly have no affection
    for this new tool of Death’s detection,
    it’s galling that I
    will certainly die
    from a MACHINE OF DEATH NEEDLE INFECTION.

  • sgv

    She came to take names
    Like the scariest of dames
    But i did like a zombie
    Said “darling get on me
    Gimme some brains!”

  • LuckyJim

    the next person in line was a sneezer
    he coughed up his fee, pulled the lever
    a cold he had caught
    of death he had thought
    when the card simply stated high fever

  • Alexander Danner

    A young woman who loved the ballet
    quit the Machine with a cheery brisé.
    “PIROUETTE,” was the prose
    that had lightened her toes;
    She had feared it would be the plié.

  • LabRat001

    His Captain appeared at my door
    To tell me the end that he saw
    He’d trod on a mine
    Which shattered his spine
    And spread him all over the floor

    The man from Nantucket decried;
    “Fuck me there’s an hole in me side”
    “With me guts peekin’ through
    All red, brown, black and blue”
    and then he keeled over an died!

    With the reaper I argued my fate
    What became of my destiny great?
    He took me aside
    and he told me “Fate lied”
    “By the way, with the bishop, CHECK-MATE!”

  • Anonymous

    Perhaps with a bang or a whimper.
    Maybe the sword or misadventure.
    Car accident, cancer or general mishap,
    But hopefully for me during slumber.

  • teedammit

    A man told of how he would die,
    At once shook off all en-you-eye:
    “I can no longer wait
    For a purpose from Fate,
    Since I see now it’s all d.i.y.”

  • ralphleon

    Does anyone know what font is used for those index cards? Reminds me of field notes…

  • Anonymous

    I once met a man in Marseilles,
    Who told me not everyone dies.
    He’d built a machine
    Out of bubble gum and strings
    Which collapsed on the poor guy.

  • TacoDave

    I followed the rules; I was law abiding
    But died on the street, through a crosswalk a’striding
    Now I know what it’s like
    Being crushed by a bike
    And a hipster who’s texting while riding.

  • Jenonymous

    We die from the moment of birth,
    No count of our days on the earth.
    And yet we all strive
    To all stay alive
    No matter what it’s all worth.

  • Anonymous

    Ulysses had promised in plenum
    To wrestle the monocled demon
    “I know I shall die,
    But I will not cry,
    So long as you save all my seamen!”

  • jcartan

    Inevitability sucketh
    In the end we are all out of lucketh
    Things are going just fine
    Till we cross o’er the line
    And that’s when we kicketh the bucketh

  • O2BIrish

    In discussions, some folks volunteer
    That their wishes could not be more clear.
    They all want you to know
    The way they’d like to go
    Is get hit by a truck full of beer.

  • DanR

    My friend who was not known for his smarts,
    Decided to set fire to his farts.
    Leaning back with obvious glee,
    He did let his methane go free,
    Barbecuing most of his tender man parts.

  • DanR

    While walking with unbridled zeal,
    I slipped on a banana peel.
    “Oh my God how clichéd!”
    I shouted, then made
    My trip into a world that’s surreal.

  • Anonymous

    You might scare some rubes with your schtick
    And your transparent “Death Machine” trick
    But these predictions are lies
    There’s no way Jake Boone dies
    Merely penning some lame lim

  • putty

    There once was a man from Bel Air
    Who was doing his girl on the stair.
    When the banister broke
    He doubled his stroke
    And finished her off in mid-air.

    (a classic)

  • DanR

    While listening to Florence and The Machine;
    Of Death did I sit and I dream.
    I considered dark portals,
    That will be entered by mortals,
    When the Reaper at last we have seen.

  • Anonymous

    Coils and souls might be buyoant
    Thus life more flamboyant
    The mortal end hidden
    I’d rather go unbidden
    Than to be such a clairvoyant

  • Pip Hunn

    The circumstances of my departure
    Entailed elaborate manufacture:
    It took Goldberg a day
    To slice, rend and flay
    And send me to the hereafter.

  • DanR

    Because I could not stop for Death,
    He instead chose to steal my last breath.
    With cold fingers he reached and took hold,
    And before my eyes my life did unfold,
    Or maybe I’m just tripping on meth.

  • hammelworks

    there once was a mother from Dover,
    her kid, squished flat, got run over,
    the blood was so red,
    the kid very dead,
    it was worse than the cat and the mower.

  • Vandertramps

    A fantastic young player of cricket
    Was shocked to receive, “DEATH BY WICKET”;
    To settle his brain,
    Tried to travel by train
    But got trampled while buying his ticket.

  • CrossedPromise

    There was a dude who liked to peruse
    The internet for all of his shoes
    He mosied unseen
    To the death machine
    Soles said the text, but whose?

  • razen cain

    The Grim Reaper was known to complain
    When souls were left out in the rain
    “This problem is a bitch”
    He said, twirling his scythe
    “I guess I’ve got Richard Harris to blame.”

  • jakobcreutzfeldt

    “How will he go,” the chorus it sang,
    “Out with a whimper or out with a bang?
    Filled with regret,
    And drenched in cold sweat,
    Like most, he’ll end with a pang.”

  • O2BIrish

    What the Grim Reaper does is macabre,
    Taking people and making folks sob.
    Days of watching them croak
    With his scythe and his cloak
    May be gory, but, hey, it’s his job!

  • websorcerer

    There once was a man who was dead.
    In Hades he then made his bed.
    “I was mean and unkind;
    No remorse did I find;
    As expected, I was shot in the head!”

  • CrossedPromise

    There was a young man named T Rex
    He was made by a Ryan in specs
    They thought up an idea
    and got a book deal
    And now we’re all writing Limericks!

  • jackruby1123

    Dozens of pounds of tobacco
    I’ve smoked it, some say I’m a wacko
    But those all night cafes
    laughing with friends for days
    Regret is something I lack-o

  • Blue

    There was a machine from Nantucket
    Which told you how you’d kick the bucket
    People lined up in queues
    But as soon as they knew
    They took out their fists and they struck it.

  • Anonymous

    When I went to the doctor he said
    You know in 6 months you’ll be dead
    But here’s the good news
    If you don’t take a snooze
    It will feel like a year instead

  • HotPepperMan

    The Machine of Death is really quite mad
    It’s lines of code had been writ bad.
    With Flash instead of good C#
    It’s now a player of the celestial harp
    And been replaced by a new iPad.

  • DanR

    While floating on Lake Lackawanna,
    I was suddenly attacked by piranha!
    I thrashed and I fought,
    But my tender flesh they still sought,
    And I knew then that I was a goner.

  • moioci

    Perhaps you will feel your blood boil,
    All the while you’re immersed in hot oil.
    So says this device
    You won’t have to ask twice
    How you’ll shuffle off this mortal coil.

  • ciacontra

    There once was a Boinger from Loch Ness,
    O’er contests did he obsess.
    But he read not the rules,
    And Fate laughs at fools,
    So his doom came via Next-Day UPS.

  • Chris

    A woman who learned that she’d die
    When an aeroplane fell from the sky
    Was home on the night
    She’d cancelled her flight
    And a different one crashed too nearby.

  • Tdawwg

    There once was a Machine of Death,
    that predicted your last day of breath:
    its unerring scope
    left no room for hope
    not even for those cracked-out on meth.

  • joeposts

    Clean air gets traded for money
    CO2 makes it much more sunny
    We’ll starve and pretend
    That it’s not the end
    Some limericks aren’t funny

  • Anonymous

    There once was a man from Nantucket
    Who didn’t know how he would snuff it
    He tried the Machine
    It fell on him, he screamed
    The paper read “Learning how you’ll kick the bucket”

  • Anonymous

    A juggler juggling axes,
    Silently poetically waxes,
    “Should I fail, close the curtain;
    only two things are certain,
    and the one you’ll get will not be taxes.”

  • alTruism

    I sometimes think of my friend
    who would say that death weren’t the end,
    but after that meal
    where he ate tainted veal,
    I aint never seen him again.

  • cyphill

    Death seemed so distant at first
    Though it’s presence I’ve felt straight from birth
    But I should have took heed
    For death comes with speed
    And I’d not have been hit by that hearse

  • SamSam

    A striver for deaths underrated
    Hoped he’d be defenestrated
    But from the machine
    “It’s a little obscene:
    it’s blood loss from when you’re castrated”

  • Carla

    Everyone’s got a story worth reading
    Though their fates may be somewhat misleading
    You can try to forestall,
    But God save us all
    If anyone’s death card reads TWEETING

  • Tdawwg

    Of Death there was once a Machine,
    that calculated your doom foreseen:
    its margin of error
    made for much terror
    and for many a rupture of spleen.

  • klaatuu

    An elephant know when it dies
    It must travel before the last sighs
    To a graveyard concealed
    And never revealed,
    Except by the mountain of flies.

    • klaatuu

      Sorry, here’s the slightly corrected version:

      An elephant knows when it dies
      It must travel before the last sighs
      To a graveyard concealed
      And never revealed
      Except to the mountain of flies.

  • Anonymous

    To the Machine went the wisest of men,
    against the advice of his friend.
    “What reason to try
    when you know that you’ll die?”
    “Ah, but it only tells how, never when.”

  • andyhavens

    No matter the place of your birth,
    You’ll always return to the earth.
    A prescient machine
    May, to many, seem mean
    But here it’s the subject of mirth.

    An M.O.D. soothsaying card
    Predicted, “An extra three yards.”
    It was subtle and dense,
    But when climbing a fence
    He encountered the truth rather hard.

    “A toaster” is what the card read.
    “I’ll avoid toast!” the hopeful lad said.
    He avoided that terror
    But a prop master’s error
    Dropped a B.S.G ‘bot on his head.

  • Anonymous

    at night before bed
    i am filled with black dread
    cause what if tomorrow
    (to their great sorrow)
    is when my friends find me dead?

  • emg72

    With Beck so sensationalistic
    And news growing surrealistic
    The Machine tried to sleuth
    What would wipe out the Truth
    And the card said: “LIES, JOURNALISTIC”

  • Anonymous

    “Do you have haemophilia?” the doc tries,
    “You know I do not,” the next man lies,
    With the sample assessed,
    The card says “BLOOD TEST,”
    And he promptly keels over and dies.

  • Anonymous

    Some day we will all wind up dead
    Be it by plague or a hole in the head
    Or hung by a rope
    Or a slip on some soap
    Or snugly asleep in our bed.

    • recognizer

      this one is so elegant it should be illustrated by Gorey.

  • justawriter

    The once was a lady from from Vegas
    Whose trial was strictly outrageous
    It turned out that when
    She fancied some men
    Her taste was anthropophagous

  • cap10wow

    i once met a man from the moon,
    who cooked up things in a black spoon.
    he said “i’m so clever
    i could shoot up forever”
    which ultimately led to his doom.

    ahh drugs and doom.

  • Gutierrez

    A boinger once stuck in a bind
    could bring not a limerick to mind
    he keeled over dead
    from a clot in his head
    and left someone else the grand prize.

  • catgrin

    That machine said that I would die FIT!
    (I thought it a mechanical wit.)
    Then a seizure I had,
    And it turned out quite bad -
    For my shocked heart decided to quit.

  • SamSam

    I got my rhythm a little off:

    A striver for deaths underrated,
    He hoped he’d be defenestrated
    But from the machine
    “It’s a little obscene:
    it’s blood loss from when you’re castrated”

    • 5onthe5

      you would win if I was judging.

  • skysky

    A man with a deathwish named Louie
    took the test without looking, and Flouie.
    When his card was read
    he was already dead,
    but they gasped when they found it said “Blouie!”

  • catgrin

    Death’s a terribly sweet girl to see.
    She releases. She sets people free.
    Comic lore would have you trust her.
    Place your future in just her.
    Better face Death than face Destiny.

  • justawriter

    Probability was once so much fun
    Oh the statistics that I used to run
    Data can be so clean
    You forget what they mean
    Until your love’s number is one

    The link goes to the most extraordinarily expressive stick figures ever drawn.

  • gravytop

    I no longer wished to exist,
    Cut my hand off, just at the wrist,
    With one hand, can’t begin
    To cut off its twin
    But my sister was glad to assist.

  • DJBudSonic

    O Death! You haunt me like a shadow,
    Your mysteries I fail to unravel.
    Foreknowledge of Doom
    Lets me walk without Gloom,
    Either way, I’ll end up ‘neath the gravel.

  • Noims

    (Machine of Death ad, maybe, with thanks to Shatner)

    Live life like you’re going to die
    Coz you will, no matter what you try
    But to compound the mystery
    On your little slip you’ll see
    How, but not where when or why

  • Anonymous

    I’ve locked myself up in my room
    Consumed with my impending doom
    It would be sublime
    To go back in time
    And never come out of the womb!

  • PaulR

    In before it’s corrected:

    What’s a determininstic universe, eh?

    Not quite deterministic, not quite determined by instinct…

  • catgrin

    “BOINGER” said the card on the ground.
    I saw no danger in what I had found.
    Then a penguin called Opus
    Turned me into a corpus
    By creating a horrible sound!

  • Anonymous

    Strolling in London one night,
    I came to a red crossing light.
    On my phone I was talking,
    So I began walking…
    But alas, in England, look right.

  • Wendell

    Though the book raised the talk show host’s ire,
    The Machine he still chose to enquire.
    And so when Mr. Beck
    Got his card from the deck,
    All it said simply was “PANTS ON FIRE”

  • ChiGiant

    Imagine a mom’s devastation
    ’nuff to send her into palpitation.
    Yes the worst she could dread
    to find her son dead
    of autoerotic asphyxiation.

  • Anonymous

    You always see limericks that rhyme.
    The words sounds alike all the time.
    I wrote one that didn’t.
    Took just a minute.
    At the end it just dies out.

  • Purebolt

    On surviving the Zombie Apocalypse
    There’s a source that provides quite a lot of tips
    To save human beings
    From brain eating fiends
    Try googling “undead love bacon bits”

  • Anonymous

    The machine said I’d die from the flu
    So I hired me a doctor or two
    Come chrismas I shimmy
    Like santa, down a chimney
    And died, like it said I would do….

  • Nefarius Dakota

    There once was a man from Dubai
    Who went fishing with three other guys
    They were murdered by clowns
    Who wore wedding gowns
    I bet that’s not how you thought they would die

  • Wendell

    So fearful of the Elevator
    You’d always choose the Escalator
    But a slip at the top
    Fell down-steps with no stop
    Reaching bottom a half an hour later

  • Anonymous

    Lousy limericks tear me apart.
    Bad scansion is breaking my heart.
    This ineptitude
    Is killing me, dude,
    I deduce that I’ll die for my art.

  • Fourmyle

    At Apple, Steve Jobs was the core
    Tried “Machine of Death” in his App Store
    Went on medical leave
    Told shareholders to grieve
    ‘Cause his iPad screen read, “Open Sores.”

    (With all due respect to Mr. Jobs and best wishes for a speedy recovery – I just couldn’t resist the pun. :)

  • Andy L Fisher

    a man once decided to stick
    an old death machine with his dick
    it foretold “MANGO FLOOD”
    as it drew out his blood
    while the man yelped, “all that from one prick?”

  • Bus

    There once was a man from Champaign.
    Public job served him small fiscal gain.
    Fox news had some crying.
    About his lack of buying.
    Poor rhetoric burst his cerebral vein.

  • Prufrock451

    There once was a woman of rarity
    Who believed in the nerds’ Singularity.
    She said “Come 2030,
    If my server stays sturdy,
    I’ll be present for all of posterity!”

  • Anonymous

    It’s a prick on the finger, then stick it
    to the M.O.D., then take your ticket.
    Whether terse or verbose,
    the machine always knows
    the manner in which you will kick it.

  • HotPepperMan

    Death rode into town for a drinky
    And met with a girl called Lewinski.
    His normal black dress
    Got into a mess
    And he was kicked to death by Binky.
    (NO, I DID NOT HAVE SEX WITH THAT WOMAN)

  • DanR

    I recently reached a state of nirvana,
    While visiting a town in Botswana.
    While we prayed and we grooved,
    My head was rudely removed,
    And now I’m buried amongst flora and fauna.

  • ChiGiant

    Curse you, you damnable toy!
    Vile gadget just made to annoy!
    All this tofu I eat,
    to stay trim and neat
    and you tell me I’ll choke out on soy?

  • Anonymous

    There once was a man from Toronto
    Who wanted “Machine of Death” pronto
    But, hurried for time
    And needing a rhyme
    He reached for the wrong -saurus (Bronto)

    ….ughhh…

  • DanR

    A guy named Dan R kept writing,
    A contest, “ooh how exciting!”
    But sometimes it’s too much,
    And he gets out of touch,
    With the audience he’s intent on delighting.

    (Meaning, should I stop now?)

  • jo

    Prince Hamlet found this undecidable:
    Could life be a thing that’s abidable?
    Which one would be tougher?
    Slings and arrows to suffer,
    Or consider himself suicidable.

  • Dewey Decibel

    The pursuit of vocational path,
    has left me with nothing but wrath.
    So before I have wruck it
    I’m inclined to say fuck it,
    just find me a toaster and bath.

  • t3knomanser

    That ol’ man from Nantucket,
    Wondered how he’d kick the bucket,
    The Machine spit out a card,
    On paper that stretched a yard,
    “Global brain ischemia” w’d snuff it.

    //Doesn’t scan right on the last line, but there need to be more limericks about brain ischemia.

    • t3knomanser

      I do fear that my death for the man from Nantucket may be too subtle in retrospect…

  • Anonymous

    “Inevitable as the tide,”
    Said the posthumous pre-suicide
    Then a card came up blank
    As his body grew rank
    And then nobody else ever died.

    • Anonymous

      Wow. This is a contender.

  • Anonymous

    All that I wanted to know
    Was how, at the end, I would go.
    So I used the machine
    and turned pale green
    When it said “You died years ago.”

    /Shyamalan’d

  • petertrepan

    The machine once said things that I like
    Such as “heart attack” or “crash on bike”
    A diverse potpourri
    Of the things it could be
    But now everyone gets “comet strike”

  • Brandon N Schory

    “This surely cannot be my lot!
    This machine can simply go rot.
    It said only ‘badger’!
    Such spurious chatter
    I imagined this thing would give not!”

  • razen cain

    A blog post read by a angry arc welder
    Led to the fiery death of Mark Frauenfelder
    And pity Xeni Jardin
    Who died of fright in her garden
    Cause Cory’s head was rather messily severed.

  • jeremynyc

    There once was a dead guy from LA
    People sorta wondered how he’d got that way
    A dog bit his ear
    Tore the flesh to his rear
    “Necrotizing fasciitis,” is what the autopsy’d say

  • PolishQ

    There was an old person of Dover
    who knew when his life would be over.
    He’d wait at the bar
    to be hit by a car
    by the man from Nantucket that drove her.

  • Anonymous

    A prophetic seer from Dubai,
    Would divine signs and portents while high.
    When a deterministic toke,
    Revealed the Great Cosmic Joke,
    He remarked, “Dude, the end’s fucking nigh!”

  • Anonymous

    No gods are installed in my head,
    At work or relaxing in bed:
    While decomposition
    Might change my position,
    It won’t matter much when I’m dead.

  • talzaken

    I said, “Show me my death in your eye.”
    Haughtily, the witch let out a sigh.
    When she pulled back her patch,
    I felt my soul detach.
    She cackled, “Now you’ll never know why!”

  • jimh

    A good man met an end most ghastly
    and was strangled at a quarter past three
    It seems a tortured soul
    Had endured one too many Rick Roll
    and our friend looked just like Mister Astley.

  • Albedo12

    A cautious young pilot from Maine
    Recieved a card printed “PLANE”.
    He abandoned his calling,
    But a Cessna was falling,
    And proved that machine right again!

  • catgrin

    I went to this new place for tea.
    Their tarot reader tried to scare me!
    “Cards say money, or die!”
    So I spat in her eye,
    And said, “How ashamed you should be!”

  • Piet

    The Marlboro man they say is dead
    The desert dunes are now his bed
    The truth be denied
    He might not have died
    Had he packed a Camel instead

  • fleshblanket

    Every year without knowing I pass
    The day fate decrees is my last,
    So each year I make
    An unbirthday cake
    That I’m dying to eat, alas.

    (With apologies to W.S. Merwin, the clever bastard.)

  • Piet

    The Marlboro man they say is dead
    The desert dunes are now his bed
    The truth be denied
    He might not have died
    Had he packed a Camel instead

  • teedammit

    The crux of each M.O.D. story
    Could be said to be: “Memento Mori”.
    For it’s true we are built
    To be born and then kilt,
    In between, though, we’re quite dilatory.

  • BottleBear

    “They all say I eat much too fast
    That from choking I’ll breathe in my last!
    We’ll see if that wills out
    Have you tasted this trout?
    Pssh, no bones –
    HCCHK.
    HCCCHHK!”

  • YarbroughFair

    There once was a souless witch named Beth
    who wrote poems of blood and Macbeth
    The last line she wrote
    Caught in her throat
    And led away by the Angel of Death

  • kendralyris

    I hope when I die it’s with valor
    As zombies, all wretched in pallor
    Come hungry for brains
    I’ll fell their remains,
    Until I’m subsumed and devoured.

  • Anonymous

    The soldier’s jealous wife ran toward
    Black ink on her hands revealed his reward
    For his slip simply read
    What Richelieu once said:
    “The pen is mightier than the sword”

  • Albedo12

    The card that I got was confusing
    It bore just one word: “AMUSING”
    If my death is a joke
    To some scientist bloke
    He’s in for a serious bruising.

  • catgrin

    A toddler defending her cause
    Exposed one of her tantrum’s flaws.
    It was holding her breath
    That caused a swift death.
    (It seems that her card had read PAUSE.)

  • YarbroughFair

    There once was a tall black witch named Beth
    who wrote poems of blood and death
    She wrote a line one day
    How her life would out play
    Snapping lead upon her last breath

  • petertrepan

    To learn that starvation would kill
    Dagny Taggart was one bitter pill
    When the market turned bearish
    She learned she would perish
    For lack of a saleable skill

  • Wendell

    The Machine’s message seemed quite enlightening
    He assumed he would be killed by ligthning
    But his death electric
    Was much more eclectic
    Christmas lights wires he was casually tightening

  • catgrin

    An elderly man’s card read YOUNG.
    A mechanical slip of the tongue?
    Nope. They found him quite dead,
    With the nymphette he’d wed.
    In bed, his aorta had sprung!

  • Anonymous

    There once was a man named Jose.
    Found out when he’d die and what way.
    He took a deep breath,
    and leapt to his death.
    Epitath: “I did it my way”.

  • Phil

    One bright summer’s day in Shanghai,
    I asked a machine how I’d die.
    “I’m afraid this is it, sir:
    Blame that man Beschizza
    He poisoned your lunchtime pork pie!”

  • icerunner

    There was a young man who was dead;
    He died of a blow to the head.
    The machine that predicted,
    the blow that inflicted,
    fell off a shelf over his bed.

  • Albedo12

    Oh my God, look how much I am bleeding!
    It’s down to this stupid death reading
    “PAPER CUT” sounded dumb,
    But the card sliced my thumb
    And the poisonous frog I was breeding!

  • jacobrakovan

    The lady’s cadaveric spasm,
    mistaken for enthusiasm
    held her lover so tightly,
    he quite impolitely
    interred her with priapasm

  • Rich T

    Thinking “Death by the fever” depressing
    A scientist started obsessing
    To create a disease
    Without cough or wheeze
    That would kill him through gentle caressing.

  • Anonymous

    There was a machine, a predictor,
    That gave a most incomplete picture.
    I stepped in the booth,
    And this is the truth:
    I cried when I got “Andy Richter.”

  • kylerconway

    Straight into the cup he spoke.
    Down to the depths to feel some hope.
    The glass at the bottom;
    eventually got him;
    as he gurgled the blood in his throat.

  • Anonymous

    There was an old man from Belgrave
    Who found a dead whore in a cave
    He said ‘How disgusting,
    But it only needs dusting,
    And think of the money I’ll save.’

  • DanR

    While you’re in the office still working,
    In your backyard he just might be lurking,
    He’ll pull out his knife,
    Stab your daughter or wife,
    Then over their corpse he’ll start jerking.

  • disl0cate

    Some scamper, some strive or cavort.
    Some abstain from all of this sort.
    We just try to scrape by
    knowing we’ll all die.
    Life’s still “nasty, brutish, and short.”

  • catgrin

    GUM’s an awfully odd way to kill
    But nicotine can, has and will -
    So if offered a stick
    First check it out quick
    Or you may end up terribly ill!

  • hammerwing

    The inimitable Angel Saint Nick,
    “M.O.D: my finale please pick.”
    It read ,”…sad to say”
    “You’ll end up one day”
    “With a Christmas tree shoved up your nose.”

    Shame on you for thinking it had to end with a dirty word!

  • petertrepan

    The pilot spat out a profanity
    As he said “This machine speaks insanity.”
    So he launched anyway
    And suffice it to say
    “This is terrible! Oh, the humanity!”

  • JackThompson

    The card was a trifle absurd:
    “you will die in a manner preferred
    by the Coleridge crowd,
    your last poem a shroud,
    but your fate will still have the last

  • Brother Phil

    The result for the chap from Nantucket
    Said “You’re in for a spot of bad luck. It
    Would seem from this reading
    That your daughter lacks breeding:
    She’ll finish you off with a bucket.”

  • Carbonfish

    A machine that could foretell my death

    Told me how I would take my last breath

    When the switch I did flip

    Came this curious quip

    “You could not pronounce the shibboleth”

  • BottleBear

    A pregnant young lass out at dinner
    Felt a shudder, a gnashing, a simmer
    She rushed to a nurse
    Who told her the worst –
    Not a babe, but a tumor within’her

  • Anonymous

    Each night as I lay in my bed
    The same thought seems to run through my head;
    “At the end of the night
    Would I die of the fright
    If I woke and I found myself dead?

  • anon

    if you are weary and striving to die
    you’ll have to do better than try
    take some pills, swig a bottle
    tie a noose, go full throttle
    and then jump head first from up high

  • petertrepan

    Dear inventor, I’m seeking, you see,
    Information that’s useful to me
    The machine, though terrific,
    Could be more specific
    Than “You’ll die by ceasing to be.”

  • snufkin5

    There was an old man from Nantucket
    Who was finally heard to say, “Fuck it!
    My approaching decline
    Is quite ruining my mind.
    I should just find a shotgun and suck it.”

  • BottleBear

    When Johnny’s card simply read “SHARK”
    “How fortuitous!” was his remark.
    Though avoiding the sea,
    His death came to be
    By an angry card dealer named Mark

  • catgrin

    It does not help one to advise
    Another of impending demise.
    The cards could just be BLANKS
    ‘Cause you’ll never hear “Thanks!”
    From someone who in any case dies.

  • Bob

    I really don’t wish to seem pushy
    But to wait makes my knees go all mushy
    Schrödinger says “wait!”
    But I must know the fate
    Of that superpositional pussy

  • HanFastolfe

    Five men long afloat on debris
    Spotted land with much laughter and glee
    The island did think
    These men, do they sink?
    Aspidochelone submerged just to see.

  • Anonymous

    “The Death Fetishist’s Lament”

    Drowning, Asphyxia, Taze-Zaps
    Cooked to death, Guillotine, Broadaxe.

    –I could clearly die happy,
    –for all of these arouse me

    Sadly, my card says “mitral valve prolapse”

  • RolandBarfs

    There once was a widow from Kuwait
    who was said to have killed all her mates
    but despite the bad press
    she had very nice breasts
    so she never had a shortage of dates

  • Girrlkitty

    There once was a woman who loved cats.
    Crazy, she wore them as hats.
    Until the day
    they decided to flay
    The skin from her head which was fat.

  • Anonymous

    A taxodermist went to Duffit,
    to ask a seer just how he’d snuff it,
    “You’ll be bit by a bear,
    and then tossed through the air
    Because you thought you would try to stuff it.”

  • DanR

    Was it vanity or simple perversion,
    That led to my gender conversion?
    While under the knife,
    Changing from husband to wife,
    I suffered from extreme blood dispersion.

  • Anonymous

    A hopeful career at the beginning,
    But then came all of that sinning.
    It should be no surprise
    (It’s in front of our eyes)
    That the word on his card was just “Winning.”

  • Hamm

    He pondered the day of his death
    Not knowing he was wasting his breath
    That day had come
    and soon he was numb
    he died from mainlining meth

  • pounana

    Heisman made a clear exhortation
    to benefit civilisation
    he said “I propose
    we’re just ones and zeroes”
    and should think about annihilation

  • petertrepan

    “What does it show me?” said I.
    “The manner in which I will die?”
    I peered in the barrel
    Not knowing my peril
    My card would say “Shot in the eye.”

  • Marktech

    And this one is not a limerick, and it’s not by me (it’s by Beachcomber); but I won’t try to resist posting it:

    Stunned by the masseur’s final whack
    The patient lay without a sound.
    Then, coming to, he hit him back:
    Now masseur’s in the cold, cold ground.

  • catgrin

    That Nantuckian fellow dropped off.
    He’d developed quite a nasty cough.
    Seems he was self-infected
    From a part he’d erected.
    It’s much healthier learning to boff.

  • aimeedon’t

    I’m pretty sure I will croak
    in a pillar of fire and smoke-
    curiosity sated,
    but if only I’d waited,
    and not given that button a poke.

  • Anonymous

    I think my death will be tragic
    The ending of all of life’s magic
    I shan’t worry now
    Lest I “have a cow”
    And die a severe hemmorhagic

  • kofi_annanymous

    It doesn’t take much to be dead,
    Maybe just some expired fruit spread.
    Perhaps a short fall, “Hello, wrecking ball,”
    Or, at best, too much mind-blowing head.

  • hdon

    my doctor discovered a malady
    surgeons were needed quite badly
    my complexion had been
    much worse when a kid
    my insurer departed me, sadly

  • irksome

    The method of my own demise
    if known, one might surmise,
    would lead me away
    from all meadows of play
    “Cuz the badgers will just eat my eyes.”

  • Andrei M.

    Death’s not so awful a thing
    It’s subject to fate, chance, and king
    It’s a lot like a snooze;
    And someday it’ll lose
    ‘Cuz I know in heaven I’ll sing!

    (apologies to John Donne)

  • CaptainObama

    Imagine if you dare, knowing your death,
    before you ever took that final breath.
    How would you spend those precious days?
    You could read a book or enjoy some plays,
    Or would knowing drive you mad like Macbeth?

  • Anonymous

    The best way to die by a dash,
    Is to have it all end in a flash,
    Stood under a weight,
    You’ll soon be ‘the late…’,
    …good friend who’s now sadly a mash.

  • cedar00

    Upside-down pudding with custard,
    Walking the fence at the dockyard,
    Single-malt scotch,
    Metric-measurement botch,
    Or infected cut from M.O.D. card?

  • Prufrock451

    When faced with their doom’s calculation
    Many tried to prevent its causation.
    Death said as he prevailed,
    “Though these fighters all failed,
    I enjoyed every bout’s prolongation.”

  • 13strong

    There is a young woman from Oz
    Who is told how her death will be caused
    She scratches her head
    Til her head bleeds and bled
    And the woman that is became was

  • Darcy Rawr

    Once an old wag from Nantucket
    kicked and knocked over a bucket.
    His toe was quite coated
    in toxins well noted
    he’d live, till he tried clean to suck it.

  • guitarchitect

    This strange, beautiful gift called life,
    is less than predictably nice.
    Yet forecast we must,
    or in tarots we trust,
    while rejecting the beauty of unpredictability.

  • cardboardtubesamurai

    An old man who lived near Duluth
    Discovered the Fountain of Youth
    He spent centuries screaming
    Through tears that were streaming
    I wish I was dead, that’s the truth!

  • Anonymous

    I know that someday I’ll die.
    The question is how not why.
    Will I get really sick?
    And go really quick?
    Or slowly decay by and by?

  • O2BIrish

    There are those who will work out like crazy,
    While there’s others you’d say are quite lazy.
    Yet the experts all state
    That they share the same fate:
    They will both wind up pushing up daisies.

  • Anonymous

    From Dante we hear of infernos
    From Shakespeare, existential “here goes”
    We hem and we haw
    and hope that we’re wrong
    That in the end we don’t end up as sterno.

  • PosthumanPicaresque

    Her life most boring and gray,
    Across the ‘verse she’d made it halfway
    At velocity absurd,
    Her death long deferred,
    As she outlived proton decay.

  • Slightly Askew

    An opthalmological surgeon
    Whose practice had begun to burgeon
    To save on his fare
    He flew value air
    And died going down on a Virgin

  • wondermark

    This is David Malki — thanks so much for all the great entries, everyone! I’m going to read through them now and pick the winner, so please consider the contest OFFICIALLY CLOSED.

  • ameta4

    I once had a dream that my dream had dreamed me,
    and if not for my dream I’d no longer be.
    It set me afloat on a sea made of me,
    and thus the predicament,
    I’m sure you can see.

  • Shrike96

    When that book proved he’d die of slow cancer,
    He thought his sorrow could know no answer.
    But knowing death can’t come any quicker,
    He filled his nights with endless liquor,
    Partying with Charlie Sheen and topless dancers!

  • Anonymous

    I shouted at the grim reaper,
    As my coffin fell deeper and deeper.
    “Don’t ogle my bride!”
    But he quickly replied,
    “I did that so that I could BLEEP her!”

  • exwob

    There once was a man from Downriver
    who thougt he would die from his liver.
    He kept on his drinking
    (while all the while thinking)
    “I’ll be damned if I die in a flivver!”

  • amycamus

    Each night I would lie awake spooked
    By forebodings that we all would die nuked,
    But the Cold War abated
    And so I became jaded,
    Only to find now that we’re totally Fuked.

  • Anonymous

    There once was a girl from Eugene
    Her own death the machine had foreseen.
    So when the moment arrived,
    She said “Oh well” and sighed
    and quietly OD’d on Morphine.

  • iskelton

    There was a carnivorous nation
    That wished to consume all creation
    But the vittles’ remains
    Sent such fat to their veins
    They soon sizzled themselves in cremation.

  • Anonymous

    I bumped into Sir Stepen Hawking
    One day when I was out walking
    He said “you and I
    Cannot ever die
    All we must do is keep talking”

  • jrtinker

    The Grim Reaper said, “You can choose
    to die later or now. That’s my news.”
    “My upload’s begun, Synchronicity won!”
    Death says, “Die.” I say, ‘I refuse.”

  • Anonymous

    A man wanted to see how he’d die.
    didn’t care when people asked why
    so he put in his finger
    it simply read “linger”
    He let out a sad lonely sigh.

  • Anonymous

    A mathematician named Hall
    Had a hexehedronical ball
    The cube of its weight
    Times his pecker plus eight
    Was 4/5ths of 5/8ths of fXck-all.