Even bad poetry springs from genuine feelings - Oscar Wilde

A Far Kraai

By Murray Stewart

Even bad poetry springs from genuine feelings – Oscar Wilde

With autumn behind us, the elves decided to have a spring-clean in the archives at the Explanation of Everything. It’s difficult to determine the gender of elves these days, but Thong – a female, I think – found some old manuscripts by this chap Roald Dahl, titled Revolting Rhymes.

Captivated and motivated, she decided there and then to enrich the world’s literary annals by contributing a poem or two of her own. More about that later.

Now, poetry can be treacherous. The first few lines can expose poets to sniggers from plebs who can’t differentiate between rhyming couplets and coupling rhinos, yet find poetry rather silly. To them it’s just linguistic doodling, like Rembrandt drawing comic strips.

Let’s face it though, some poems can be somewhat confusing. Who wanders about lonely as a cloud when they could just join the Bingo club for company? And talking about ‘lonely’, why would some other bloke – seeking a tall ship – go down to the sea again, where both sea and sky are apparently loners, and would probably prefer it if he didn’t pitch up anyway?

Then there’s this Shakespeare chap, who claimed to be somewhat of a wordsmith. He had a bash at poetry, but never really cracked the rhyming bits (or the story lines, really) so he just waffled on regardless and called it prose. By breaking up the lines, he reckoned it at least looked like poetry.

Bubble bubble, toil and trouble

What’s this I see before me, Banquo?

Into the valley of death rode the six hundred

A horse – my kingdom for a horse. Tally ho!

He also wrote a play. Similarly, TS Elliot, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Zappa, Keats and Spike Milligan are equally confusing if you’re not on the same medication as they were when writing.

But back to Thong. Inspired by Revolting Rhymes, her poem is based on last year’s research for our column Facts from Fables about The Hood, a den of dubious delights in the Black Forest, where we exposed some shocking truths behind those old fairy tales. It’s titled: Hoodwinked by the Little Red Rider.

A strapping young lass was our Little Red Rider – bold, and never twee.

And at her leisure, and customer’s pleasure, she’d claim, “We’re here to please.”

So many a gent, came and went, to the Hood to ease their cares,

With Snow White handling the queue below, our Redhead remained upstairs.

As a business The Hood was incredibly good, with the cash-till constantly chinging.

With drinks on the house, there was never a grouse – in fact it got all of them singing.

Now Simon, who most people knew as the Pie-man, was always at their front door,

And Jack Horner, for instance, would turn on a sixpence, if told he could come back for more.

Now Little Boy Blue seemed a regular bloke – was a regular customer too,

And together with Peter, the pumpkin eater, their friendship grew while they queued.

While chatting one day – in a casual way – Pete asked Blue if rumours were true.

”What do you think? I much prefer pink – I only wear blue as a ruse.”

With a whoop and a shout they both came out, and the closet was closed forever.

They married that year and it’s pleasing to hear, they’ve opened a boutique together.

So the question we asked, considering their past, is why would they visit The Hood?

If it wasn’t for nookie, was it Rooikappie’s cookies, which made them feel oh so good?

Well, that’s it. No doubt you’re relieved to learn that our redhead upstairs wasn’t a floosie at all. No. She sold dope cookies.

Anyway, Thong promises to improve – it was her first bash – but she now plans to write a children’s book: Jou Ma se Poems.