Mary Maloney

Mary Maloney was eating some bread,
when suddenly (and with her mouth full) she said,
“I think I would rather have jelly instead,
and blue striped bananas with mustard and cheese
that is made from the milk of mature bumble bees,
and toasted marsh muffins with hot onion jam,
all sprinkled with shavings of cod-scented ham.
I’d also like octopus stuffed with the eggs
of the blue flying mammoth that has sixteen legs”.

“Then, with it”, said Mary, “I really do think,
I’d like a few gallons of something to drink,
Like cauliflower juice and iced octopus ink,
and prawn-flavoured milkshakes.
I’ll have two or three
with the juice of the green Andalusian flea”.

“But then”, said her mother, who listened in fright,
“I think that you’d have to get up in the night,
and call for the doctor to open you up,
and remove fifteen metres of gloppity glup,

and scrape your insides out right down to your toes,
perhaps flush you out with a ten metre hose,
then sew you back up with a needle so big
it could fix a large hole in an elephant’s wig.”

Poor Mary Maloney turned green and then red,
and in a tremendously small voice she said,
“I think that I might just keep eating my bread”.