Can you keep a secret? Good!
Cos this one’s super hot –
In my desk, amongst the mess,
I found a …. you-know-what.
Now promise you won’t tell a soul
Not even Mary-Lou,
I turned it round and then I found
A note from you-know-who.
I laughed so hard my tonsils ached
I thought I’d nearly die,
It must have happened you-know-when
Because of … you-know-why.
Now don’t you go and blab all this
To Rosie and her lot,
If you do, I’m warning you,
They’ll give us you-know-what.
An astronaut spooned special pudding last night,
For Hamish, Ramona, Christina and Dwight.
The pudding had stardust and peppermint chips,
With jellybeans, chocolate and icicle tips.
The taste was delightful, the kids wanted more.
They licked all the bowls clean and ran to the store.
The astronaut followed, but fell in a puddle.
His head hit a rock and he said in a muddle –
“We need dusty stars, minty icicle beans,
A packet of chips with some pepper and greens.”
The kids crowded round him and said, “You’re confused,
What you need’s a doctor, your head is quite bruised!”
There once was a poor ballerina
Whose blue tutu was often much cleaner
But she munched on a biscuit
A blunder to risk it
A Tim-Tam, a small misdemeanour.
I was a happy ballerina
But now I’m feeling blue.
If you had made this blunder,
You’d be unhappy too.
I was feeling rather peckish,
So what did I do?
I ate a crunchy biscuit.
Now the crumbs are in my shoe!
There was a certain platypus
He lived in five mile creek,
Who (prompted by the latest trend)
Went vegan for a week.
He tried butternut pumpkin cubes
And purple eggplant too.
He prodded peas with spoon and fork
And sipped hot mushroom stew.
He crunched on juicy celery,
Gave artichokes a try,
Sautéed leafy silver beet,
And munched on broccoli.
No doubt the fare was healthy,
But it mostly went to waste,
For those nutritious vegetables
Just didn’t suit his taste.
So he returned to worms and such
To bugs and shrimp so fine,
And left the vegetables to us;
Omnivorous mankind.
Hey diddle duddle
what a terrible muddle
when the astronaut stepped on the moon
The cow looked confused
the wee dog was amused
and the cat and the fiddle just spooned
Allan said: Just a little bit on nonsense which sprang to mind when I saw your list of word prompts in Poetry Prompt #14
Pick a piece of purple paper
And a purple pencil too,
Do not wait until you’re prodded,
For you have a job to do.
Draw yourself a purple pumpkin:
Purple platypus as well,
Then you’ll have a purple picture,
That you’ll never ever sell!
Monty says: I took the prompt as an invitation to alliterate.
I poked a purple platypus
So playfully I prodded
It peered out of a pumpkin patch
it winked at me and nodded
The platypus was at a loss
no reason was there known
why he was in a pumpkin patch
and not his river home
I gently pushed him in a box
this muddled monotreme
and set him free to swim again
down at our local stream
There once was a family named Bear
Who thought they had nothing to wear.
While eating their oats
They remembered their coats
And decided to go to the fair.
The number of Bears you would see
Was just a small family of three.
There was Mother and Dad
With a baby they had
And they lived in a house by a tree.
They went to the fair to have fun,
But their time there had hardly begun
When they each said: “I’m hot!”
For it seems they forgot
That their fur coats held heat in the sun.
“We’d better go home,” they all said.
“Let’s finish our porridge instead.”
(If only they knew
A young girl was there too,
Who was sleeping in Baby Bear’s bed!)
As soon as they opened the door,
They saw that their bowls had held more.
Some porridge not there!
One broken small chair!
But a bigger surprise was in store.
For then the whole family Bear
Were wanting to search everywhere.
When they saw Baby’s bed
Held a young girl instead
They growled: “That is really unfair!”
Their guest got straight up with a shock.
(The Bears had neglected to knock).
She ran out the door
And they saw her no more
While the Bears quickly fitted a lock!
Monty says: I decided I’d like to try to retell, in verse, a condensed and slightly embellished version of a story about a family many children would know well.
One day I saw a bottle that was lying on the sand.
I asked: “Why are you lying?” Then I grabbed it with my hand.
The bottle made no answer and it gave a glassy stare:
It clearly felt it had a right to spend time lying there.
I saw a drip form on its lip and thought it was a tear,
Which seemed to say: “Just go away and leave me lying here.”
But I’d been taught that lying was a serious sort of sin,
So straight away, without delay, the liar went in the bin!
Monty says: The idea of using word play for this poem came while working on another poem in response to the same prompt.
Australian Children’s Poetry 