First rate rhyme for middle class people.

Here I am after a long break at blogging for various reasons, including house renovation, cooking research, long discussions and unfinished projects related to genocide, writing, investigative reportage that has ended badly on at least one occasion, a general awareness of aging and a re-think of objectives I once held sacred. During these processes I have decided to put out three rhymes (and drawings)  I made ages ago for my little sister Nisha. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them.

SANTA STEW

   

Santa had an horrible accident and ended up a snack for tea,

He lowered himself down the wrong chimney.

Santa dropped into a boiling vat of stew in his merry haste,

The poor man thought it was an unused fireplace!

"Oh my goodness!" Big mistake he reckoned,

Then disintegrated into bits of stew in a second.

That evening the Patel family kept going back for more,

Such delicious vegetable stew, they had never eaten non veg before,

The potatoes were amazing, though it was very well stewed meat,

Except for white clumps of hair that got stuck between their teeth,

Thus was consumed poor jolly Santa Claus,

Thus was digested the last truly giving man there was.

Went to sleep the Patels' though if they'd known they'd have surely barfed,

In the frozen distance a surly reindeer laughed.

The reindeer had told Santa it was absolutely safe to go,

there was no fire, as they’d peeped and checked before.

Now why would gentle reindeer stew Santa to the bone,

they were tired of just pulling sleds, and wanted pads of their very own

So they looked around for one who could break some labour laws,

And found one Mr. Patel to bump off Santa Claus.

The same Mr. Patel whose house it was,

The man who stewed Santa Claus..

Had made a deal with the reindeer that they had schemed it for ages

Post stew he sent a proposal to the elves that he’d pay them half wages.

The elves wrote back that they thought he was cracked in the head,

So he took the business to India and China instead.

Whole factories that work overtime to make all kinds of toys,

For millions and millions of girls and boys,

The reindeer and Patel keeled over with laughter.

The elves couldn’t compete and retired to a salt mine soon after.
 

I wish this had a happy ending but that really is not the case

Listen to the subtext with minimal distaste.

Squeezing down a chimney is very bad for health,

Never trust a surly reindeer, he’s after all your wealth,

Buy toys only where the toy company pays their workers true,

Or you’re just making rich the creatures that turned Santa into stew.

TOILET  MONSTER

Sitting on the pot one day staring into space,

Thought i  saw  a peeping thing.... with a funny looking face

I shuddered and looked down  between my feet,

And noticed a baby monster crouched behind the seat!

Frozen in fear i stared, knuckles all a grips

It stared  back nervously with trembling monster lips

Spider legs a mess, covered in flies,

Saliva dripping teeth, two gigantic bug like eyes,

He seemed to be like me, staring into space,

A little bit lonely, a twitching furry face

I swung at him with a toilet brush and  fell flat on the toilet floor,

(Try to swing with a toilet brush with your pants about your toes)

“Please don’t flush me, or break my monster bones”

He whimpered in broken English..."Me totally alones"

Your mum dropped a hair drier in the flush he said in a voice sad and muted,

And my family in the septic tank was instantly electrocuted!

(I felt bad for the monster baby as I loved my parents true

If anything ever happened to them I might cry behind the toilet too.)

I hugged the baby monster,his eyes filled up with tears,

Ill take away your sadness and help you with your fears

I washed the baby monster,  scrubbed his awful feet,

Used a wire brush on his eyeballs and his teeth.

I bathed him over, under with the strongest ever floor cleaner,

and he looked so much less meaner.

I kept him in a  dustbin,

By my little bed,

Fed the monster garbage,

And fondly scratched his head.           

I take him to family gatherings

Nobody can tell

Everyone thinks hes an ugly relative,

As I dress him up real well

He small and ugly with his third eye in a patch,

Wearing Nikes,  t-shirt and cotton pants to match,

I spray him with deodorant, and comb his disgusting hair,

but everyone ignores my friend, no one seems to care.

He tried to join the community and threw a party or two,

But people didn't appreciate the creature from the loo.

He baked cakes and did a lot of social works,

But just because people are poor does not mean they are not jerks.

Hes not the life of the party, just a  monster with a heart,

(People did not like him as  he did not fit the part)

So the day came and I packed him a rubbish lunch as well,

Hugged him, sobbed  and made a fond farewell.

And he posed, heroic like an Olympic diver on the toilet seat,

The last i saw my monster was his disappearing scaly feet,

I looked in the swirling pot, he vanished in a flash,

My best friend had disappeared with hardly a splash.

The Carnival dustbin

Once lived a large family of brown rats 5,000 years old at least,
Living crowded, tiny and occasionally hungry somewhere in the east.
 They did lots of things, which to many seemed quite odd;
They put it down to culture and animal headed gods.

One brown rat hopped in a suitcase
Flew across the seas
Thought he’d have some better luck
Looking for cheese.

From the midst of various huddled masses
He rushed through the airport gates onto greener grasses
And found a carnival dustbin filled with food,
And an off white mouse and soon a brood.

72 types of popcorn, 94 cuts of meat,
18 types of cheeses and 23 types of beet,
All high fat, sweetened, fully cheesed,
The rat was rather pleased.

For mice time flies,
In a month he was double in size
And one night over a piece of candy mid lick,
The rat felt homesick.

Into the airport he crept and into a handbag he leapt,
 Close to the heart of a software engineer’s mother, the brown rat dreamt,

Of home and mother and other things true

Of food and smells and beauty too.

The plane flew over cities that lit up its wings with a gentle glow,
Over millions of rats running to and fro.
Mindless of the plane that hurtled above,
Just as the flyers were, of the earth below.

The wandered his home place
Looking for a familiar face.
And finally found the mice, still tiny in size
They said, "Who is this fat fellow…guys?"

The rat caught the next flight back across the seas,
back to the off white mouse with assorted fleas,

Over millions of rats running to and fro.
Mindless of the plane that hurtled above,
Just as the flyers were of the earth below.

If you're ever at a carnival, ever at a fair
listen carefully at the dustbin, if you care,
You might hear the strains of a sad old song,
And find a brown mouse that doesn't belong,
Anywhere.