I have written the following weird poems over the past few years, usually at moments of heightened excitement or immense boredom. Mostly the latter. Whether funny, strange, or just plain silly, whenever the inspiration comes, each poem is written down here.
The worm can turn
The worm can turn;
Haven’t you heard?
When you think upon it
It seems absurd.
Worms can turn near,
Worms can turn far,
It really depends
On where they are.
Worms are turning
Everywhere.
One might be turning
In your hair.
Worms in an apple
Find turning hell:
‘Cause apples are hard,
They can’t turn very well.
Moose
A moose is like a bull on stilts
With a silly kind of head.
And if one of them sat on you
You’d probably be dead.
They grow to 7 feet in height,
Or something rather near,
And if you threw beer onto them
Then they would smell of beer.
Un-vegetarian
Oh, I’m an un-vegetarian:
I love to eat real meat.
I’d rather eat a roasted lamb
Than stuff that’s made of wheat.
I shape my beef as carrots,
Make chicken look like peas;
I flavor it to taste like them
To hide carnivorous needs.
Turtle
Last night I saw a turtle;
It looked like a grenade.
I picked it up and threw it.
No explosion was made.
Pot smoker (to the tune of ‘Big spender’)
The minute you walked in with a joint,
I could tell that you were high on some resin; a real pot smoker.
Good deal; well refined.
You look like that stuff blew your mind.
So let me get right to the point:
I don’t flip with normal passive smoke I breathe.
Hey, pot smoker!
Smoke a little pot with me.
Reincarnation?
If reincarnation really is true,
Not lies made by a deceiver,
Then why does nobody ever remember
A life where they were an amoeba?
Worms
Worms are skinny,
Worms are fat,
They live in the ground,
They live in the cat.
Some can swim;
None can fly.
Chop them in half
And they multiply.
They have no legs,
They cannot frown,
They don’t have necks,
And they can’t sit down.
To sum up their use
In a few choice words:
They aerate the soil
And feed the birds.
Once ‘upon’ a time
Once upon a time,
There sat
A rather small,
Demented cat.
It choked upon a prawn
One night,
And toppled off the time
In fright.
Flattened
The story that is told
By a severely flattened toad,
Is of evidential failure
In attempts to cross the road.
The bee
A bee flew by
And hit my eye,
Yesterday, at twelve.
I wish it had been quicker,
As I can’t think of anything to rhyme with twelve.
Lamentation for the snail I accidentally stepped upon
Thou dost creep within the night;
Damp ground and air to aid thy flight.
The darkness keepeth thee from sight,
While on my lettuce thou dost bite
And drape with slime.
But thou hast crept too stealthily;
And was not this the death of thee?
For though it was too dark to see,
A noise could have prevented me
From crushing thee last night.
Oh dear…
The ending of the floor
Has caught me unawares.
This must be the reason
Why I’m falling down the stairs.
Capital sounds
Who could have thought that here
Such delight can be found?
On the causeway of St. Michael’s Mount:
Where cars run over whelks
And make such splendid popping sounds.
Tortoise
Have you ever sniffed a tortoise,
Or tasted one that’s fried?
Of course you might have said you did,
But then you might have lied.
Exuberance
There’s no spectacle, I’m sure,
That can fill a man with glee,
Such as forty plastic pelicans
Floating in the sea.
Wasp
O wasp upon my window sill,
How dull thy once dread sting!
Thy presence brought foreboding
Of the pain that thou couldst bring;
And this caused me to cudgel thee,
Thou wretched, wretched thing.
Malaria
I am a protozoa:
Behold my polar rings!
I luncheon on red blood cells,
And do some wicked things.
I am Apicomplexan,
A parasitic breed.
You know me as malaria,
And I am vile indeed.
Dead flies
Dead flies
Window currants
Once had headaches from
Misunderstanding of glass
Without buzz
Blown away
With the breeze
Too late the window opened
Black things
Crunchy things
Filthy things
I’ll fetch the vacuum cleaner
Chickens
Chickens look peculiar.
They feed on worms and seed.
We eat so many of them
It’s a wonder they can breed.
They scratch and cluck and peck all day,
Or sit there laying eggs.
They haven’t got the faintest clue
That people eat their legs.
Chickens are all feathery.
They strut about with pride.
You couldn’t eat a raw one,
But they’re great Kentucky-fried.
Although chickens have got wings
No one lets them fly.
Instead we make them run around
‘Cause we like chicken thigh.
Chickens in the chicken hut.
Chickens in the yard.
You can eat most of them,
But their beaks are pretty hard.
Monkeys
On safari out in Africa,
When I was just a child,
We shot a monkey every day;
It used to drive them wild.
“May I shoot a monkey?”
Was what everybody said.
One couldn’t find another
Who did not want monkeys dead.
But when one shoots a monkey
One should really comprehend:
That monkeys don’t like being shot,
It drives them ’round the bend.
So, after several months of
Shooting monkeys every day,
We realised quite suddenly
We’d blown the lot away.
Far and wide we searched for some,
But, alas, all were dead.
And we didn’t have a thing to do
So we shot frogs instead.
Dipping one’s toe in the worm nest
Do worms have their own worm law?
Do they squeal, shriek or roar?
Are their nests of fluff or straw?
And do they have a bathroom door?
Have you seen a real worm nest?
Dipped your toe in for a test?
Would they welcome such a guest?
Or would they just be unimpressed?
When near the worm nest please beware.
Where you are treading have a care.
Ask the worms and they’ll declare:
One should not dip one’s toe in there.
I shall not compare thee to a summer’s day
T’was a hot summer’s day,
We were merry and gay,
Playing cricket with tadpoles and straw.
Then, as I was bowled out
With the head of a trout,
We heard a feint knock at the door.
The dogs gave a bark;
And we thought it a lark
As the door was nowhere to be seen.
So they ran round in squares
At the top of the stairs,
Chasing a lima bean.
We all stood aghast
As a crumpet flew past,
Unbuttered and not even toasted.
And there on the floor
Laid an underwear drawer
With a letter I’d already posted.
By mid-afternoon,
With the aid of a spoon,
We had whittled a boat out of cheese.
For the rest of the day
We played bridge the wrong way,
And walked on our hands and knees.
What a waste of time is a sneeze
Sneezing is a waste of time.
It stops one doing things.
When one’s throat is very sore,
Sneezing also stings.
It spreads bacteria around
And frightens family pets.
It blows paper on the ground
And mucus out in jets.
Daddy flings cat poo
Every Saturday, around quarter past two,
Daddy grabs a shovel and flings cat poo.
Out in the garden is where he goes,
Hunting out the bits of poo he throws.
Daddy says cats are horrible things;
They make the poo that daddy flings.
The culprits are the cats next door;
They used to have three cats, but now they’ve four.
Daddy won’t let me go outside and play
Until all the cat poo is thrown away.
He flings it all over next door’s fence:
Well their cats made it, so that makes sense.
Be more careful
CRUNK!
Anguished wailing fills the air.
Such deep regret
Caused by a chair.
The leg,
For which I gave no care,
Met with me in painful flash
As toe was stubbed.
The sprout
Ne’er before hath nostril sniffed such foulsome reek.
How did such power proceed from but so small a squeak?
And what, I say, hath forced such vile an odour out?
It is, my friend, the wretched thing we call the sprout.
The days of mice
The mice play
On summer’s day:
With tales of tails
Caught in traps;
Of fattened cats
Caught in flaps.
The mice eat
Amongst the wheat:
Small plump rodents
Eating grain,
With squeaky chuckles
At cats in pain.
The mice rest
Within their nest:
Dreams of cats squashed
While on prowls,
And happy thoughts
Of bludgeoned owls.
Memory
I remember as it happened
Back in 1963;
Even though I wasn’t born then,
I recall that memory.
‘Cause they put some bits of spider
In a node within my brain,
I recall that Tuesday morning
When I floated down the drain.
Beavers
I once heard an enlightened man
Proclaim (during a hosepipe ban):
That beavers do not make a dam
With plastic forks or a leg of lamb.
Then he prayed upon his knees
For beavers flattened by tall trees.
My favorite word
Giblets, giblets,
The name I love to hear.
Its basic form of eloquence
Can make dead weasels fear.
Giblets, giblets,
When said out in the road,
It can deflate a porcupine
Or make a cat explode.
Giblets, giblets,
If shouted upside down,
Its tone can boil tortoises
And cause a mouse to drown.
Fraudcaution
You paid for this by cheque sir;
A very ample portion.
I regret to say,
Your cheque has bounced
With a warning of “Fraud Caution!”
Never trust hamsters
There’s nothing quite like eating bees
For helping one to fly;
Although, I’ve only heard this said
By hamsters that were high.
There’s nothing quite like sniffing stoats
For helping clear one’s head;
Although, I’ve only heard this said
By hamsters that were dead.
The walking
Oh, a dog has passed by here:
It’s been and walked on through.
I can say this without doubt, old chum,
As I just stepped in its poo.
Selective facts
When information we receive,
Of something we wish to believe,
Knowing that we could be deceived,
We fools become.
We choose the things that suit us best,
And do not put them to the test;
But hurriedly discard the rest,
Without a care.
And to our deaths we shall defend
Our baseless hopes to bitter end;
The facts and evidence to bend,
To prove us right.
Then holding fast to our desire,
We march blindly into the fire,
Which isn’t there – so said the liar,
Who we believed.
Avoid at all costs
I went outside the other day,
I went to walk around;
And there I saw a porcupine
Flying underground.
A weasel then looked up at me,
“Good morning, sir”, it said;
And then it took a cricket bat
And hit me in the head.
A badger bit me on the toe,
A bumblebee said “MOO”,
And then a dog poo stepped in me:
I got stuck to its shoe.
I have an intermittent fear
Of carpets, ducks and cheese:
That’s the state your mind gets in
When taking LSD.
Things that I think of
There are things that I think of
That bring me delight:
Like flies, wasps and bumblebees
Having a fight.
When cows fly at night
I saw the cows a-flying
Late one night in June.
On the rooves below they dropped their dung,
By the light of the silvery moon.
Although there were so many,
You wouldn’t know they were there,
But for splatters of one thousand pats
Resounding through the air.
The sight it was tremendous,
The smell was rather vile,
For putrid heaps of bovine filth
Adhered to every tile.
As quickly as it all began,
The creatures fled away
To barns throughout the countryside
Where they reside today.
Untold truths
Parrots never get the bends;
They don’t dive in the sea.
Snakes will never feel the pain
Of an arthritic knee.
Whales can never know the joy
Of climbing in a tree.
But why is it that no-one ever
Told these things to me?
I saw prawns
I never sought to find them,
For them I had no care,
But as I turned the corner
A pile of them was there.
The sight of them elated me,
I shouted out “Hooray”,
And cried a tear of joy or two
When I saw prawns today.
Praise of aquatic molluscs
Hooray for whelks and barnacles,
Down beneath the sea!
They brave the terrors of the deep
With great alacrity.
To limpets, clams and oysters too,
We shall raise a toast;
And all our other mollusc friends
Living on the coast.
They’ll never be alarmed at all
When mighty waves crash down;
A Special power they possess,
For they cannot drown.
Invisible flying walruses
There are many walruses
Flying through the skies.
No one ever sees them there,
For they are in disguise.
If you ever hear a thud,
But see no reason why,
It may be a walrus
Falling from the sky.
If you ever hear a bang
But find no cause at all,
A walrus may have just gone past
And flown into a wall.
If you ever hear a crash,
Followed by a splat,
A walrus may have fallen down
And landed on a cat.
Hedgehog
I stepped outside at dusk one night,
And from the corner of my eye
I saw a movement small and quick.
It was a hedgehog passing by.
He noticed me and stopped quite still,
Then turned into a spiky ball.
He rolled around then shot off fast,
And bounced over the garden wall.
Clothes moths are beastly
Alas, for the clothes moth
Has eaten the tweed
Of my fine Harris jacket,
With staggering speed.
Its condition was good
When last put away,
But a hole was found in it
When I looked today.
I’ll get out the mothballs
And kill ’em all off,
Because moths are such rotters
And I’ve had enough.
Random things
Random things can make you laugh:
Like throwing custard in a bath,
Or gluing sausages to goats,
And shouting out that concrete floats.
Better not, old chum
Never chew an angry wasp,
And never lick a cactus.
For these are bound to cause you pain,
Even with great practice.
Copyright © Christopher Pike