Lowering the bar

Has Mr. Beagles ever heard of "cowboy poetry?"  That's what I thought of when he quoted Service, who is mentioned in the Wikipedia article about cowboy poetry.

I'm not as well rounded as you guys; my interest and knowledge of poetry is sorely lacking.  But the more I think about it, it could be time for me to check it out more thoroughly.  It seems like the perfect thing to read strictly for pleasure.  The last poet I read with any enthusiasm was Charles Bukowski, but that was many years ago.  Not much of his stuff rhymed as I recall, but I thought it was pretty good stuff.

There is one poem that has stuck in my head for more than fifty years, told to me by my Uncle Jim, titled (I think) "The Frog."

What a funny little bird the frog are
Him ain't got no tail, almost hardly
When him hops, him walks
When him don't hop
Him sits on his funny little tail
Which he ain't got
Almost hardly

That's what I remember, but a Google search shows a lot of variations.  It may date from the 19th Century and was seldom written down, transmitted mainly via the oral tradition.  Uncle Jim told it to me a couple of times and it stuck with me.  He never told me where he heard it from, though.  Have you guys ever heard of it?  It may be a regional thing from the Pennsylvania area, but I'm not sure.

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After recalling "The Frog" I remembered something else but I don't think it's poetry, really.  It was something that Jerry Lewis quoted on the Tonight Show in the early 60s.  It starts out "One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese..." and goes on to a tenth item but I won't quote it here.  Very strange, I thought at the time but it, too, stuck with me but I didn't remember the complete version.  Wikipedia to the rescue!  It was a test from the 40s for a radio announcer audition.  If you could recite the whole thing, with proper enunciation, in one breath, you were qualified.  I tried it this morning, and failed.  If you're not familiar with it you can read it here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Announcer%27s_test#One_hen.2C_two_ducks

Almost poetic in it's own way, but my standards are pretty low.  My mother told me what she called the "world's shortest poem" and it was titled "Fleas":

Adam
had 'em

I told you the bar was low.

"He's a poet and didn't know it,
 but his feet show it,
 they are Longfellow's"

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So, what's the real deal with Goldman Sachs?  The recently fired Mooch was the fifth former Goldman banker tapped to fill a prominent role in the Trump administration.  As a humorous side note, he wasn’t officially supposed to start until Aug. 15, so his tenure, technically, was minus 16 days.