Is the limerick form inherently silly, lighthearted, or naughty? It’s an important question, right up there with unemployment, universal health care, and the correct ingredients for Borscht. Now you can help me answer it by writing sad limericks and posting them here.
My own humble attempt, to start things off:
Sad Limerick
There was a guy called Yesterday
I watched him wipe a tear away
He gilded a frame
Empty. Her name
He tried to remember each day
I can so do this.
This is a true story about my friend Katherine’s mother, and active mountain biker who took ibuprofen daily to manage the muscle pain. Don’t do that. Even if they tell you it’s safe.*
When biking undid Maggie’s knees,
She started NSAIDs,
In the final analysis,
It led to dialysis,
Now she’s sorry whenever she pees.
*not to be misconstrued as medical advice.
Ask your doctor if Advil is right for you.
Oh, dear! Now I’m depressed!!!
Oh really?
Try this instead then:
From a wagon a far cry from beau,
Tattered dress, and a scruffy chapeau,
To a square stark and mean,
She (beneath guillotine,)
Thought “I’d rather be eating gateau.”
(edited a word.)
Man, Bloomy, this is hard! Mine keep turning out silly.
Let me get back to you on this.
T
I think Bloo’s inspired me to pen this one:
A lovely young maiden, Elaine
Took the flu when she played in the rain.
Now she sleeps in the earth
Under six feet of turf
And no one remembers her name.
That’s one of my own; my favorite for this type of thing has to be one that I read in one of the Amphigorey books:
Each night father fills me with dread
As he sits on the foot of my bed.
I wouldn’t mind that he speaks
All in gibbers and squeaks,
But for fifteen long years he’s been dead!
Edward Gorey is a sort of personal hero of mine. 
–James
Mine too.
"…except for young Neville, who said “Well I never, but then I suppose it was all for the best.”
(last line in a Gorey pop-up book called The Disappearing Party.)
There was an astute European
With a wife and a dog and a wee ‘un.
He died on the spot
And his wife cried a lot,
And the child cried, "oh dog! you’re a-peein’.
I’m sorry, but the form just makes me smile. These have all made me smile. I’m pathetic.
Oh th’ things that young’un would do
when shet of these mountains of blue
But th’ back of beyond
Had forged a strong bond
At the last, to the hills the soul flew.
Bill’s bedrock of faith is undone
A lifetime of hate has begun
As long as he lives
He can never forgive
The drunk driver who murdered his son.
It seems you really have to go over the top to have any hope of it feeling sad.
this one kinda works
A young man who played on the fife
Chased a girl with his carving knife.
As a man and his wife,
They lived all their life,
And in death they ended their strife.
–James
It is Autumn, the mulberry bare,
and the children ascending the stair.
Will the parking-lot dawn
show my childhood forgone,
or the blackbirds that catch in my hair?
Excellent. FJohn and 'Grats are getting close I think. But it seems to be necessary to take liberties with the meter of the first line, or all hope of sadness is lost. (I am sorry, but nothing with the words “carving knife” in it can be sad. Gross, yes; sad, no.) I am on the fence about flying souls.
you obviously haven’t seen cousin Vinnie carve a turkey…
My stomach felt all fluttery
When 'Bloo critiqued my poetry
He liked not my knife
Or my poems of strife,
So I went off to post in Proctology.
–James
Last major screen appearance of Herman Munster. Sad indeed.
I tried and I tried and I tried
And I thought about people who’d died
But my striving for pathos
Just ended in bathos
So I cried and I cried and I cried.
Herman’s screen life ends in ignominy
on the set of my cousin vinny
a screen legend he’d been
oh old freddy gwynne
now he’s remembered in a film with Joe Pesci