Large Fierce Mammal

Today’s Dark Sentiment may or may not be appropriately titled, but no matter. What follows was inspired by SFM, and led to me turning an old joke I heard a long time ago from a Bermudian broadcaster into a poem that ends with poop. Before that though, it has a near death experience, rescue, bad manners, betrayal, infidelity, black magick, and shapeshifting; so it belongs here. Besides, by this point, you all deserve a laugh.

First off, a few days ago I was inspired to write this while changing SFM’s diaper:

He shits in his pants
Then near cries out a lung,
But we grant him forgiveness
Because he’s so young.

Even as this shitty little ditty came to mind, I had already resolved to recite it whenever provoked by people who were performing at a level of maturity that was deserving of ridicule, age notwithstanding. You hereby have my permission to use it for the same purpose.

And now, to Story Night With the Colonel. This is the second time I have written a poem based on a joke I heard in my travels, the first one being A Codger’s Lament, which you can read by clicking its title.

Story Night With the Colonel

By LFM

Source: http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3521/3216771458_603ac31478.jpg

The old Colonel sat in his usual chair,
His pipe and his whisky glass filled.
We all gathered near as, with clearing his throat,
All sound in the club room was stilled.

The Colonel had hunted more days in his life
Than most men alive have spent still,
And the tales of his hunting brought hearts into throats,
At the daring he brought to each kill.

But this story differed from any before,
Though it told of a hunt, that is true.
But the quarry became the good Colonel himself,
When he picked the wrong woman to woo.

In the northlands it was, there to hunt the white Bear,
That the Colonel would near meet his death.
O’ercome by the creep of a long, frozen sleep,
He awoke warm, and still drawing breath!

Beset by a storm, he’d been snowbound and lost,
And took shelter in lee of a log.
Slowly slipping away, that is where he was found
By an Indian Hunter and Dog.

The hunter who found him was Chief to his Tribe,
And his wife nursed the Colonel’s sick bed.
It took many weeks, but in her gentle care,
The Colonel came back from the dead.

A beauty was she, and the Colonel admits
He became less a mannerly guest
When returning of strength caused an increase in length
From allure of her rump and her breast.

He said, “I’ll admit, t’was the work of a shit,”
“Being saved, sheltered, cared for, and fed,
“But in my defense I will say I was young,
“And my thinking was with the wrong head.”

So, dashing and handsome, he charmed the Chief’s wife,
And whispered such things in her ear
As led her to join him in sport through the night
That I’d rather not talk about here.

But the Chief found them out and was wroth in extreme,
And he set his best men to their finding.
He’d torture them both, then he’d burn them to ash,
And he’d torture their ashes by grinding!

But before he could catch them they’d run to the woods,
And they hid there twelve nights and a day,
The sounds of pursuit ever fainter until
They decided they’d got clean away!

Deep in the forest they killed there a Moose,
And they made a small tent from its hide.
Not much of a home, but inflamed by their love,
They nestled and rutted inside.

But the thing of it is that the Chief wasn’t done,
And his vengeance he’d not have denied.
He cast him a spell to turn love into hell,
And he aimed it at his faithless bride!

Now the Colonel took pause to draw sip from his glass,
And not one of us there drew a breath,
As he told us of passions, the sort that are shared
But by lovers who’ve cheated sure death.

Now he told of the morning, so frosty and still;
He awoke in the warmth of soft furs,
Then leapt out of the tent when his eyes found the truth –
That the furs that enwrapped him were hers!

In the dark snowy night, the Chief’s magick had come,
And it turned his wife into a Bear.
As for the Colonel and love she once held,
There wasn’t a trace of it there.

His cry woke her up and she bared all her teeth,
And she shredded the tent like a shroud!
He told how she came and stood over him there,
And he mimicked her battle cry LOUD!

“AAAAARRRGH!!!!“ he cried, then he puffed on his pipe,
And he looked at his glass and was still.
Nobody moved but the barman who crept
To his side, there to pour a wee fill.

“I shit myself,” were the next words from his mouth,
Spoken thoughtful, with dark furrowed brow.
“What? Then?” did I blurt, for I couldn’t hold back.
“No no,” said the Colonel, “Just now!!!“