THE DREADED BUGGYWASSELS

May 27, 2009

You must be careful, big people say,
of Buggywassels everyday.
Buggywassels, what can they be?
Do they look like rinosofferouses
are they smaller than a flea?
Well I have seen them, and I can tell
they’re scarry, warty, and they smell.
They often come from sewage drains,
but sometimes through aches and some times pains,
sometimes they drop out of a tree
and slip and slide through revelry.
And when they come then everything goes:
they’ll snitch your shoes and snitch your clothes,
and snitch money from your father’s banks
and take your pills and guns and tanks
and when you’re sure that’s quite enough
they’ll snitch away your other stuff.
And when they’ve snitched you night and day
and took your thinks and what you say
and snitched your gadgets, gears and goes
they’ll snitch these green things in your nose.
Oh me, oh my, what should we do?
This is prepondrous if its true.
I put the question on the net
and waited until I might get
some insight — but got only junk
that twenty thousand people thunk.
Until I got a message from
a tiny child who sucked her thumb:
her mother wrote it down for her
without a comma or a slur.
She was from an African tribal place
and sent this drawing of her face.



Buggywassels, she plainly wrote,
come like this drawing and this note.
They appeared two times last year
and stole my father’s chandelier,
and stole my momma’s credit cards
she used as wind chimes in the yard,
and stole my crying doll you see
with her controls and battery.
Then stole my TV and my games
and took my books of weights and names
and everything that they could find
except the pictures in my mind.
So that’s what’s left, but its enough,
I play with sticks and rocks and stuff
and make up worlds and draw and write
and dance in circles half the night.
So if those Buggywassels come
don’t shoo them out or make them run
just give them all your stuff and junk
that packs your mind with glop and gunk
and let them open up that place
of freedom that’s in empty space
for through it comes those songs that fly
through Earth and sea and stones and sky.
With that I took the junk I own
and piled it up outside our home
and drew a sign to show and say,
“This is a Wassel take away.
And now I write and sing and rhyme
and draw and paint most of the time,
then hug my momma and my dad
and say don’t worry or be sad
for if the Buggywassels come
having nothing much is fun.
Now they don’t get it, but when they do
they’ll have more time for me and you
and be happy to be free
to dream and write and dance like me.