~
Little Jack Horner,
still lives in some corner
of the mind,
if memory’s right.
‘Twas something he’d done
to a plumb
with his thumb
I’d read as a kid
in some rhyme.
I favored, rather,
those of the others –
The poems
with purloined
overtones.
Take Little Bo Peep
and her fluffy
white sheep,
which she’d lose
almost all
of the time.
What was it with Peep
that she just couldn’t keep
her sheep close at hand
or to mind?
Then there’s Little Miss Muffet,
who sits on her tuffet,
eating those Kurds,
man by man.
Now, I’ve never heard,
not one single word,
on Kurds,
than they live near to Iran.
Well thank God for that spider,
who sat down beside her,
else she’d have eaten all Kurdistan.
~
And, Oh! Pray tell!
what about Jack and dear Jill:
Just what in Sam Hill
were they up to?
Well, well. One can tell,
when they came back all smiles,
one could tell what went on
wasn’t painful.
And wasn’t Jack nimble?
Wasn’t he was quick?
Why, I’ll bet that Old Jack
knew every trick
to lighting both ends
of his candle stick.
~
And then there’s the puzzle,
of a cat and the fiddle.
And why did a fork
run away with a spoon?
And that cow – Holy Cow!
She jumped over a moon!
Why, I’d of been fine
just to kick it’s behind –
Ka-Boom!
Take that, you old moon!
Still, there’s that fork,
who’s attached to a spoon.
And that cat
won’t give back
the fiddle.
Now, here, somewhere,
there must be a riddle.
Either that,
or some strange peccadillo.
~
And Mary, of course,
with her sweet little lamb.
And it’s fleece as fluffy as wool.
Well, it was wool, after all!
And she took it to school!
All for some show and tell.
Now, it’s never been said,
but I’ll bet if it had,
that, That!
would have gone over well.
~
Oh those rhymes!
Salacious at times.
How they piqued and tweaked
at our minds.
and when, as a child,
though it’s been quite a while,
I learned how to turn an entendre.
And just like those Kurds,
with the meaning of words
they oft times do slip over boundaries.
Those rhymes will live on
long after we’re gone,
and incite all our minds with interest.
Just buried beneath
of each poem’s own surface
abides an infinite jest.
~
revised 14 June 2013
©2013, Marvin Loyd Welborn
