I Wandered Lonely as a Pride of Sheep

by Doug Pugh

’Twas brillig and the slithey toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wind
Which smelled real bad and stunk
Awful
But not so bad, almost, nearly, and pretty close to
The stench of the jub jub jub jub jub jub bird
Which jangled eerily at the end of its nearly finished end
In quiet tones of whole meal bread (which is good for you)
And so fair maiden
I will woo
In tones of the undead roaming
Like buffalo herds on the planes
All humped backed excited and lascivious
In tendrils of foreplay
Where snookered I lie across a pocket with a red
Ball blocked
Like my toilet
And my sink runneth over
Plunging through faint mists of fog
With the call of a bloated frog
To woo
Too woo
Two woo
And the owl flapped his feet
And stared with his nose
And the dish ran away
With the fork
Giving ever a choice
Of direction
In tuning
The long dead pianos
And harpsi
Chords
Strangled by wires
That telegraphed
A massage
Lubed in deepest darkest dreariest densestdutiful drips of daffodil brown
Which hurt
Once
The magic had gone
Once
Long ago
Today or tom
Orrow
When we will meat again
Some sunny overcast day/evening/primrose/silk (please delete as applicable) (or not)
And I will drown you
In teacups of splendour
Making no more sense than the ants
As we wander lonely
Going the right way together
As we have planned all our lives
Our separate ways
In our usual unscheduled bizarrely twisted lugubrious silent wracking coughs
Et spiritus sancti
Pro patria mori
FCUK
GAP
And other splendrous wibble wobble brandy names
Finding ourselves caught in the thrill
Of the jub jub jub buj buj bird
Or something somewhat sort of similarly simile simply spontiferously splendid
I am indeed
Yours faithfully
Almost sincerely
Quite likely
Or not
Amen

The end
Is nigh
Or neigh
Depending on the hoarseness
Of your throat
In the many swallows
Of summer
Hip hip hooray
And god save the queer old dean

There once was a woman from Nantucket