Friday 30 November 2012

Poetry Friday - The Backwards Poem

This poem isn't mine, the original author is a subject of great dispute. But it's just such a great poem I had to share it with everyone. There are plenty of versions all over the internet, so I mashed them together and came up with this one:

Ladies and jelly spoons, hobos and tramps;
Cross-eyed mosquitoes and bow-legged ants.
I stand before you to sit behind you,
To tell you something I know nothing about.

Next Thursday, which is Good Friday,
There's a mother's meeting for fathers only;
Wear your best clothes if you haven't any,
Please come if you can't; if you can, stay at home.

Admission is free, pay at the door;
Pull up a chair and sit on the floor.
It makes no difference where you sit,
the man in the gallery's sure to spit.

The show is over, but before you go,
Let me tell you a story I don't really know.
I was sitting in the corner of a round table,
When a paralysed man came and told me this tale.

One bright day in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys got up to fight.
Back to back they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other.

One was blind and the other couldn't see,
So they chose a dummy for a referee.
A blind man went to see fair play.
A dumb man went to shout "hooray!"

A paralysed donkey passing by,
Kicked the blind man in the eye.
Knocked him through a nine inch wall,
Into a dry creek and drowned them all.

The blind man saw it; the deaf man heard it,
And the dumb man called the brigade.
The fire engine came by two dead horses,
Ran over a dead cat and half killed it.

A deaf policeman heard the noise,
And came and killed those two dead boys.
He lived on the corner in the middle of the block,
In a two-story house on a vacant lot.

If you don't believe my lies are true,
Ask the blind man; he saw it too.
Through a knothole in a wooden brick wall.
And the man with no legs walked away.

No comments:

Post a Comment