Doggerel

Doggerel

The Manure from Snowy River 

There was movement at the station

For the horse had got the trots

And had left his mark on every strand of hay.

They had sent him to the doctor

(for some constipating shots),

But he couldn’t seem to stop in any way.

So all the vets and noted doctors

From the clinics near and far

Had gathered at the stable overnight.

For their strawberries love manure

(and their rhubarb likes it too),

So they sniffed the pungent air with pure delight.

But one was there, a young man,

With a quickly balding head.

He was haunted by the insults of his peers.

Of the hairs that he was born with,

Far the greater part he’d shed.

To lose the rest was high among his fears.

He had come upon a mission,

Patent medicine to use,

In praise of which, his language was verbose.

So they took him to the patient,

There seemed nothing much to lose,

To their surprise it proved a clogging dose.

But the floor had been so slippery

That he had often lost his feet.

He was covered in the muck from head to toe.

Yet this farcical baptism

Made his hairpiece obsolete,

For within a week his hair began to grow.

And down among the suburbs

Where the middle-classes search

Their combs and feather pillows for lost hair.

Where the prospect of a bald scalp

Makes a young man pray in church

Or try on sundry toupees in his lair.

And there among the offices,

Where the trend-setters do sway

To the fashions, and whatever now is new,

The manure from Snowy River

Is a household turd today,

And the chemists seek the ultimate sham poo.

Mycetozoa

What kind of a bug is a slime mold slug?

Is it animal? Vegetable? Mineral?

Or is it just a desire of ameobae to sire

A structure that’s purely ephemeral.

No relief

Once while on Strathfield station

the public convenience was under alteration

(though no work was being done).

So, for those inconvenienced, there was a sign, saying:

“Toilets out of order, use platforms 3 and 4”

Heaven forbid if someone did!

JW loves FC

When sense and antisense combine

Their separate selves, now joined, entwine.

Then base to base, and strand in strand,

They move as one; a single band.

Wanda the Wombat

Beside the electric heater stood

A little wombat chopping wood.

And she wondered, if she should,

Go on strike or wear a hood.

Oft stood she in silent thought

Remembering all that she’d been taught

Of history, and how she ought,

To cut her toe-nails very short.

With confusion did she fight

Until her thoughts, they came out trite.

And she wondered, if she might,

Buy herself some Vegemite.

Then she realized no-one cared

How well, or otherwise, she fared.

And she wondered, if she dared,

To have her power-drill repaired.

So lay she in furry hide,

And many salty tears she cried.

Without a friend, the whole world wide,

Our lonely wombat pined, and died.

Or would have done … had not an owl

In passing heard our hero’s howl

Which promoted this esteemed fowl

To present her with a flannel towel.

With this gift,, each made a friend,

With ties of love no storm could rend

With Wanda’s luck in upward trend

Our story comes to an happy end.

There was a young man of Khartoum

There was a young man of Khartoum

Who’d spent all his life in a tomb.

His one wordly vice

Was napalming mice

Which dispelled his habitual gloom.