~

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

http://www.tinkwelborn.me