Inkpotamus

This is the tale of a lazy lad,
Who started out idle, but ended up bad.

Jack's old mother worked terribly hard,
Tending their vegetables, sweeping the yard,
Milking the cow, ploughing their land,
But lazy old Jack never gave her a hand.

He often came home very late,
But never closed the garden gate.
He liked to slam the cupboard doors,
But not to shut his bedroom drawers.

He never could bother to pick up his clothes,
But often found time for picking his nose.
Always taking, never giving,
He thought the world owed him a living.

To other children he was bold:
"You always do what you are told!
But I am tough, so don’t you meddle,
With me, my friend, ‘cause I’m a rebel!"

Clearly though, his thinking’s hazy,
He wasn’t tough – just very lazy.
While others worked and got a job,
He was a work-shy, skiving slob.

After months of awful weather,
His mum concluded they would never
Grow enough to feed themselves
Or store for winter on their shelves.

Young Jack had gone to milk the cow,
And that is where she sought him now.
She found him sleeping in the shed,
And tapped him lightly on the head.

“Wake up, wake up, wake up now, Jack,”
She yelled, and slapped him on the back.
“You dozy, droopy, dim, disgrace!
Wake up before I lick your face!”

She boxed his ears and tweaked his toes,
Pulled his hair and flicked his nose.
“You can’t stay here in bed all lazy,
Now off to market – sell old Daisy!”

Jack just sniffed and kept on snoring,
So she got some water - and started pouring.
“Get up now, Jack,” she softly muttered,
“Aargh!” said Jack, he coughed and spluttered.

As Jack led Daisy up the lane,
He stopped to have a rest again.

From deep in slumber, Jack awoke,
Sharply prodded by a bloke,
Who looked at Jack, and asked him, “Where,
Are you going with that cow there?”

Within a minute, or so it seems,
He’d swapped the cow for magic beans.
How it happened, Jack’s not sure,
He’d meant to sell for so much more.

Wide-eyed and simple, he fell for this tosh,
“Oh wow, magic beans! Magic beans, oh my gosh!”

When Jack ran back, he was most excited,
He told his mum, who was not delighted.
“You fell for a swindler’s tricks and bluffing,
You sold our cow for next to nothing!”

“Oh, they’re not nothing, mother dear”
Said Jack, “They’re magic; see! Look here.”
He wished on a bean, like a magic ring,
But nothing happened, not a thing.

Then wetting his sleeve to make it damp,
He rubbed it like a magic lamp.
Looking like he had been wronged,
He quickly waved it like a wand.

But nothing worked, the truth was tragic,
None of the beans was the least bit magic.
His mother’s heart was fit to burst,
This useless boy was worse than worst.

“You stupid, blithering idiot, son
Can’t you see what you have done?”
She chased him round and round the room,
And hit his bottom with a broom.

“Oh what will happen to us now?
We have no food, no cash, no cow.
Surely it shan’t be much longer,
Before we both shall die of hunger.”

Just after dawn, Jack awaking,
Found his empty stomach aching.
Downstairs he rushed to get a treat,
But there was only beans to eat.

“These magic beans don’t work at all,
So why don’t I just eat them all?”
Mad with hunger, quite deranged,
He ate the beans then felt quite strange.

Loud trumps from out his rear, the boy let,
Then quickly ran off to the toilet.
Sitting down, his bowels were pained,
He heaved and pushed, he groaned and strained.

The shed in which the toilet sat,
Fell apart around poor Jack.
On a beanstalk, now unravelling,
Were Jack and the loo seat, skyward travelling.

So fumbling up there in the clouds is:
Jack! He’s hitching up his trousers.
Where’s he going, up so high?
To the Land of the Giants, in the sky!

Some people think a giant’s good,
Just misrepresented and misunderstood,
But they are fearsome, angry creatures,
Who eat schoolchildren and their teachers.

They never wash and all have dirt
Upon the collar of their shirt.
They like to fight and punch and thump,
And never say pardon when they trump.

The thing they like more than the rest,
Is an Englishman - they taste the best!
One often hears: “You are what you eat,”
It’s this that makes the English neat.

Giants love the taste that lingers,
Of sausage, burger and old fish fingers.
They love to savour on their lips,
A trace of pizza, kebab or chips.

A hint of curry or of chinese,
Or hot and greasy toasted cheese.
Some are spicy, some are sweet,
With greasy hair and cheesy feet.

It’s hard to think what could be worse than
A creature that will eat a person,
But such was the giant, Blunderbore,
And into his garden the beans’ stalks soar.

As Blunderbore bent, to sniff at a rose,
Up came the beanstalk, just by his toes,
Alas poor Jack, on the beanstalk went,
Inside the nose of the giant gent.

Amongst the Giant’s nasal hair,
Sat Jack beside the bogies there.
It felt squelchy, dark and gloomy,
And then he heard a voice all boomy.

“Fee Fie Foe Fum,
I smell the blood of an Englishman,
Be he alive or be he dead,
I’ll grind his bones to make my bread!”

The Giant’s wife, a giantess,
Heard her husband’s loud distress.
She called him in to eat his supper,
And sat him down to have a cuppa.

“Please don’t fret, now, Blunder dear,
You know there are no people here!
Pest Control have cleared them out,
There really is no need to shout.”

At this the Giant began to wheeze,
And then let out an awful sneeze,
Out flew Jack all full of grief,
Into the Giant’s handkerchief.

He threw the hanky on the table,
Then poor young Jack found he was able
To hide within it, that he might,
Be shielded from the Giant’s sight.

His wife said, “I’m off shopping, dear.
If you should find that feller here,
Cook him slowly in the pan,
And save me some, I do like man.”

As she left him to his leisure,
The Giant went to count his treasure.
From a box, high on a shelf,
He counted out the coins himself.

“One, two, nine, eight.
Hmm, this counting thing is not so great.
Seventeen, twenty, nineteen, ten.
Hmm, that’s not right – I’ll get my hen.”

Under a sign where ‘Hen’ was written,
Within a cage, there sat a chicken.
“Hear these magic words I say:
Chicken cluck and chicken lay!”

The chicken, it stood very still,
As if as full as you could fill.
Its eyes were bulging in its head,
Then from its bottom shot an egg,
Thick and heavy, gold and shiny,
The chicken collapsed all tired and whiny.

The Giant laughed and held it up,
Then popped it in a silver cup.
After that he had some food,
And felt he was in songful mood.

From on the shelf he grabbed a hold
Of a lovely harp all made of gold.
“Play for me harp, my favourite tune,”
Angelic music filled the room.

After a drink and then some more,
The Giant slept upon the floor.
Under the hanky Jack took a peep,
And saw the Giant was asleep.

He grabbed the gold, the hen, the harp
And chucked them in a nearby cart.
He dragged the cart along the floor
Then through the cat-flap in the door.

Jack was thinking he was clever,
Having stolen all the treasure.
But then the harp began its grieving,
“Stop this thief before he’s leaving!”

The chicken squawked and clucked about,
“Help! Help!” the harp began to shout.
“Shut up,” cried Jack, “Shut up, shut up!
Before you wake the Giant up!”

The harp and chicken kept on squabbling,
The cart, it lurched then started wobbling.
Jack grabbed the both of them and threw
The harp right out, the chicken too.

The Giant woke and saw young Jack,
Putting gold coins in a sack.
He cursed with words that didn’t rhyme,
As down the beanstalk Jack did climb.

In pursuit, the Giant chased
After Jack who fled in haste.
On the beanstalk, all unsteady,
The Giant found he was too heavy.

He tried to climb, he tried to slide,
The beanstalk wobbled side to side.
He grabbed a leaf, it tore in two,
He grabbed another, it tore too!

The stalk it slipped between his fingers,
He, in the air, a moment lingers,
A massive shadow spread around,
As the Giant hurtled down.

The trees did shake, the earth did groan,
The Giant fell on Jack’s Mum’s home.

Suddenly, or so it seemed,
Giant police were on the scene,
“Now then son, it’s been requested,
That for your crimes you be arrested.”

Quickly then they locked him up,
In the back of their big truck.
In Giant law his crimes were double:
Stealing gold and causing trouble.

Despite his mother’s soulful tears,
They sentenced Jack to twenty years,
Locked up inside a prison cell,
That had a dark, dank dungeon smell.

But giant bars have giant gaps,
Between them, and this is perhaps,
Why they failed to hold him in,
As Jack in fact was rather slim.

So Jack escaped and got away,
And is in hiding to this day.
But you will wonder and ask what
Kind of luck his mother got.

When Giant police took Jack away,
She was in tears, she cried all day.
And then she gave a little yelp,
As a Giant voice said, “Can I help?”

The Giant he could not remember,
Any thing since last November.
He’d fallen down with such a whack,
And hit his head just at the back,
Then he found he’d quite forgotten,
The things that make a giant rotten.

Now he was calm and well-disposed,
Kindly and gentle, especially to those,
Who needed some help, who’d suffered some harm,
So he helped Jack’s mother run her farm.

He never said, “Fee Fie Foe Fum”
And never ate an Englishman,
He’d rather have a cup of tea,
Than make his bread from you or me.