Collywobblers
Perverse Verse for Guys & Ghouls
by Mary Cook
Published by InkSpotter Publishing at Smashwords
Copyright 2008, 2011 Mary Cook
Smashwords Edition, License Notes.
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Rock-a-Bye
Rock-a-bye baby, you’re safer up there
In your cute little crib swaying high in the air
Grandpa is standing below with an axe.
We think he’s the one who’s behind those attacks
On little old ladies: he shoots them for fun.
(He’s losing his mind, but he still has his gun.)
Grandma is sobbing and holding her head
But most of her fingers are under the bed.
Mother sits catching her blood in a pail:
Her leg’s hanging on by a thread—from a nail.
Your cousin is tending the wounds to his knees.
He’s sucking a thumb, but I don’t think it’s his.
Rock-a-bye baby, keep dropping those rocks:
We don’t want to see you end up in a box.
Your sister fell foul of that serial ripper—
He cut out her liver and put in a zipper.
Be sure to take very good aim with those stones.
It takes just a few to break grandpa’s old bones.
Careful now baby, he’s cut through the tree!
You'll just have to die—you’re not landing on me.
Scared of Flowers
I'm scared of flowers now.
What once were messengers of love denote a death.
Raised lovingly in garden plots, the blooms grow hostile,
Springing up at roadsides in the wake of accidents
Where a nap at the wheel becomes the graveyard sleep.
Blood blossoms in the snow or mud or dust
Or on the backs of heads caught unawares on something hard and sharp,
Part of once-prized vehicles—those twisted heaps of smoking metal
With broken glass crunched under paramedics’ feet.
The passers-by slow down in search of road kill,
Sighing at wounds like geishas’ lips.
Their hot, excited breath steams up their windscreens,
And at every site the flowers appear—florists’ artwork or simple posies
And grey matter. No matter, it’s done now.
Blood red and bandage white, the wreaths accumulate in tumbled heaps
Alongside roses, peonies and pinks of blood.
I shrink away, avoiding sights of what was human,
Watched by the eyes of those who never were—
Cold eyes grown hot with twisted lust and scalding tears of false sorrow
For those they never knew and never will do now.
They genuflect or move their lips in silent prayer
To lay their bogus floral tributes.
Don’t let them ever point those things at me
For flowers scare me.
The Head-Down Scuttling Ones
Watch out for the head-down scuttling ones.
They’re the worst of urban terrors.
You never know where they’ll turn up:
In the subway, the mall or your own backyard.
Slicing at soft flesh with sharpened blades
On the ends of walking sticks,
They beat a path through shopping crowds.
The man with the umbrella with an eye on every spoke
Is on the lookout for yours and mine
To complete his collection
To be taken out, polished, and pocketed again.
Watch out for the bag lady with her savage hatpin
That she will in all probability run through your eardrum.
Give her some coins but never let her take your hand
Or she may carry it off
To some sewer—home to the head-down scuttling ones
Who lurk in silent menace,
Stalking streetcars for their soft-shelled freight.
Just watch out—and listen for that dry scratching sound.
Oh Grandma
Oh Grandma, what big eyes you have.
I wish you’d put them in.
I wish you’d put your teeth in too—
They’d much improve your grin.
Oh, Grandma, what big ears you have:
So neatly sliced and dried.
Oh, Grandma, what a massive head—
With soupy stuff inside!
Mother’s Ruin
Old Mother Hubbard
She wept and she blubbered
On finding her pantry was bare—
Except for an eye
And a black-beetle pie
And a tangle of blood-clotted hair.
There were fragments of bone
In a dish on their own
And an octopus nailed to the wall.
And that portion of brain
With the big sticky stain
Is a relic of Humpty’s great fall.