Tag Archives: Jabberwocky

In the oddest of these excerpts from HORRID HEROES AND CRAZY CROOKS by David Clement-Davies comes a very rare bird, originally designed for a collection of nonsense poems and stories called Pollipigglepuggar, but now finding her rightful place at the end of a human hall of fame…

THE INFAMOUS POLLIPIGGLEPUGGAR BIRD

Though PolliPigglepuggar is a nonsense kind of WORD
You CAN’T hunt down in any diction-reeeee,
‘THE Pollipigglepuggar’ is a most exotic bird,
Who sleeps within the Pollipiggle tree.
As brazen as the Jabberwock,
As brutal as the Jub,
She boasts a certain blabber shock
A kind of ‘there’s the rub’,
Defying good AND monstrous villainy!
With something of the sensless too,
In a lofty place to rook,
Who couldn’t make here hero, no,
Nor even worse a crook,
So I hope her form defies a cator-greeee!
She isn’t quite a Parrot
Though her plumage is akin
And her ears are thin and furry, as a bear,
Her tail looks like a carrot,
While she has a sort of chin,
And wears a set of curlers in her hair.
Her beak is made of lemon peel,
Her eyes are black and blue,
Her call is like the bleating of a goat,
Her favourite meal’s spaghetti
It’s weird, but still it’s true,
She loves to string so loosely round her throat.
While, on her Pollipiggle branch,
She perches day and night –
A look that says – there’s nothing else to do.
Though in those scented piggle leaves,
She’s dreaming of the fright
I gave her when I stole out and went – ‘BOO’.
But just before I tell you
What a racket THAT inspired,
There’s something else to show you all, for free,
Not the colour of those feathers
Or the way her feet are wired,
But the nature of the Pollipiggle Tree.
The Pollipig’s a cousin of the Lollipopple plant,
In the genus of the Ligglepipple root,
Its leaves are made of herbal tea,
Although the branches aren’t,
While its flowers sprout out in rubber, like a boot.
It sways there in the piggle breeze,
Just waiting on some fun
Or that Puggar bird to use it for her bed,
And, since this tree can’t walk with ease,
(The thing can’t even run!)
It’s fond of simply growing up instead!
So there it waits to ponder,
As it blossoms once a year,
When the swooping puggar-puggar will appear,
Until from out of yonder
The thing loops through the air
And settles with a whooping, on its ear.
Behold the Pollipiggle Bird,
A fowl that isn’t deep,
A-landing on its side within the shrub
A bird, you see, that’s so absurd,
It promptly falls asleep
And dreams of bathing nightly in a tub.
So there they snooze together,
Like a perfect pair of chums
A-deep within the pollipiggle wood
And there the tree gets bigger
While the Pollipuggar hums
A tune I can’t remember, though I should.
You see, I’ve quite forgotton
That thing I had in mind,
Namely WHAT the creature cried when given fright;
It screeched out something rotten
When I woke it from behind,
Then called out like an ostrich taking flight:
“oh, polli, pig AND puggar,
oh piggle, puggle, pol
oh, rallop, lipig, gopple, gup and gol
oh luggup, paggle, leppug, paaaa
And glipple loppgup too.
Which really meant no more than;
‘Who are you?”
Oh, I love my Pollipiggle bird
A-sleeping in her tree
With her multicoloured feathers on her wings
And her strange, but polli, habits
Which NEVER seem absurd,
Like those ears that grow like rabbit’s,
Or the piggle way she sings,
And the puggar way she knows just how to be,
While she’s snoring up her Pollipiggle Tree.

Horrid Heroes and Crazy Crooks is under copyright to Phoenix Ark Press, 2014, All Rights Strictly Reserved. If you enjoyed this you might like to read about Vladimir Putin, Dick Whittington, Al Capone, Sweeney Todd and Sherlock Holmes in blogs below. The picture is a Wikepedia image of The Jabberwocky from Alice Through The Looking Glass.