These poems are obscure philosophical jokes. An explanation is given at the end of the file.

Quadruplicity drinks Russell
(Author: Victor Gijsbers)

"The hanged among the damned,"
said Satan once to me,
"Must drink, when they descend,
from a red and foaming sea.

It's anger liquified,
this cup they have to drain;
in endless fury raging
they'll live eternal pain.

Decapitated sinners
imbibe another draught:
'Repentance' is it's name,
their crying good for naught.

And those who have been quartered
are cursed with hesitation;
It seems that quadruplicity
drinks procrastination."

Drinking Tea
(Author: Eva Deinum)

What is this place we live in, or better still: survive
this world so full of worries, people haunted
by the wraith of time, where survival pends
on drinking, drugs and alcohol
But from the Heavens we recieved
our dearest cups of tea

Singularity drinks a moment's peace
a single sip of pure tranquility
within a sea of haste

Duplicity drinks some more than that
to take a breath between the cups
gain strength to carry on

Triplicity drinks a lucky third
to feel at ease the whole day through
and do a lot of work

The more the better it might seem
But vengeance waits as quadruplicity
drinks procrastination

Noam Chomsky once illustrated the concept of 'meaningless sentence' with a now famous example: "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously". This sentence is grammatically correct, contains only common English words, and yet has - according to Chomsky - no meaning whatsoever. Thinking about language and meaning one day, I decided that perhaps there was no such thing as a grammatically correct sentence without meaning. This thought reminded me of Chomsky's sentence, and I decided to write a piece of prose or verse where his sentence would have meaning. (I was thinking of a environmentalist whose ideas had turned to mere words, losing all their emotional power - but nevermind.) However, a quick search on the internet revealed that this project had already been completed! So instead, I turned to Russell's example of a meaningless sentence: "Quadruplicity drinks procrastination". The above is the result of a challenge distributed among some of my friends; more contributions are, however, welcome!

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