Ogden Nash?

"Candy is dandy,
But liquor is quicker"
- O. Nash

"Here comes the Wapati
Hippity Hoppity"

Requiem
by Ogden Nash
There was a young belle of old Natchez
Whose garments were always in patchez.
When comment arose
On the state of her clothes,
She replied, When Ah itchez, Ah scratchez

Who wants my jellyfish?
I'm not sellyfish!

The rhino is a homely beast;
for human eyes he's not a feast.
Farewell, farewell, you old rhinoceros--
I'll stare at something less prepocerous.

I’ve never seen an abominable snowman,
I’m hoping not to see one,
I’m also hoping, if I do,
That it will be a wee one.

I love his attack on figurative language, Very Like A Whale. I'll try to remember to dig it out when I get home, unless someone can copy and paste it from somewhere. He's one of my favourite poets, which probably says a lot about my level of interest in poetry.

Actually, I found it really quickly. Here it is:

One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by authors of simile and metaphor.
Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,
Can't seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have to go out of their way to say that it is like something else.
What does it mean when we are told
That the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?
In the first place, George Gordon Byron had had enough experience
To know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lot of Assyrians.
However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and thus hinder longevity,
We'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.
Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold,
Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a wolf on the fold?
In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy there are a great many things,
But I don't imagine that among then there is a wolf with purple and gold cohorts or purple and gold anythings.
No, no, Lord Byron, before I'll believe that this Assyrian was actually like a wolf I must have some kind of proof;
Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big red mouth and big white teeth and did he say Woof woof?
Frankly I think it very unlikely, and all you were entitled to say, at the very most,
Was that the Assyrian cohorts came down like a lot of Assyrian cohorts about to destroy the Hebrew host.
But that wasn't fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he had to invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolate them,
With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiers to people they say Oh yes, they're the ones that a lot of wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them.
That's the kind of thing that's being done all the time by poets, from Homer to Tennyson;
They're always comparing ladies to lilies and veal to venison,
And they always say things like that the snow is a white blanket after a winter storm.
Oh it is, is it, all right then, you sleep under a six-inch blanket of snow and I'll sleep under a half-inch blanket of unpoetical blanket material and we'll see which one keeps warm,
And after that maybe you'll begin to comprehend dimly,
What I mean by too much metaphor and simile.

One of the all-time greats. Ogden Nash was a real genius, if the word means anything.

THE EEL
I don't mind eels
Except as meals.
And the way they feels.

What else is there??

The cow is of the bovine ilk;
One end is moo, the other, milk.

my two favorites: here

To a Small Boy Standing on my Shoes While I am Wearing Them   

Let?s straighten this out, my little man, 
And reach an agreement if we can. 
I entered your door as an honored guest. 
My shoes are shined and my trousers are pressed, 
And I won?t stretch out and read you the funnies 
And I won?t pretend that we?re Easter bunnies. 
If you must get somebody down on the floor, 
What in the hell are your parents for? 
I do not like the things that you say 
And I hate the games that you want to play. 
No matter how frightfully hard you try, 
We?ve little in common, you and I. 
The interest I take in my neighbor?s nursery 
Would have to grow, to be even cursory, 
And I would that performing sons and nephews 
Were carted away with the daily refuse, 
And I hold that frolicsome daughters and nieces 
Are ample excuse for breaking leases. 
You may take a sock at your daddy?s tummy 
Or climb all over your doting mummy, 
But keep your attentions to me in check, 
Or, sonny boy, I will wring your neck. 
A happier man today I?d be 
Had someone wrung it ahead of me.