The Toad
One night in the spring of 1887, a strange happening shocked the inhabitants of Crockcaster County, England. An entire village was completely destroyed by crushing, apparently by some as yet unidentifiable species of giant toad. Professor Hepple Prinkle has recently made available diary accounts as taken down by himself, contemporaneously with the events.
The entry for March 17, the morning after the disaster, reads:
“The sleeping village nestled tight.
Its sandstone walls fresh-washed;
But woe, alas, this very night,
By giant toad’s toe squashed!”
Reality proved too hard to believe, however, as we read the next day’s entry, an obvious rationalization:
“The giant toad doth have no toe,
By old misnomer knowed;
And thus the village was not toed,
But just toenail-ingrowed.”
The following day he questions even this hypothesis:
“A toenail sports not any toad-
This fact was known of old;
But let this now a warning be:
The toads are growing bold!”
On March 20 the search for bodies was concluded:
“A female student’s battered bones
Were found ‘neath ruins throwed;
A toad expert was heard to blurt:
‘No toad-toe toed that coed.'”
March 21 was the day for solid thinking:
“It seems the villagers now need
A weapon that protects.
My own invention does the job:
Its name will be Toad-ex.”
By March 22 many were claiming that the tracks were not those of a toad at all, but a gnu:
“Those gnu-men foster faulty thought-
Their brains with mold o’ergrowed.
The enemy disguised his tracks-
The toad-toe toed in code.”
The next morning the newspaper headlines were clear:
“This very night a blondish boy
Trod down a country road.
In morning’s light some farmers found
The towhead’s head toad-toed.”
Several distinguished solutions had by now been proposed:
“A senator, in grave address,
With flowery phrases glowed.
He said, ‘Start off an avalanche;
Presto! Toad a la mode.'”
“A scientist, quaint introvert,
And quaintly loaded, glowed,
His stoned expression gurgled out:
‘I want my electrode.'”
Prinkle’s entry for the 27th:
“The toad, meanwhile, has struck again,
Beside an old railroad.
The beast trod down a passenger
Right after he depoted.”
“When asked about the episode,
The half-wit Lit prof crowed, ‘Epode.'”
The strange attacks ceased abruptly at this point, and the professor formed his conclusions:
“Now, sad to say, The Roguish Toad,
Escaping vengeance owed,
To find a giant female toad
Into the sunset rode.”
A Sonnet to My Mistress with the Fancy Greek Name
My mistress thinks herself musician,
For when gas fouls her fair digestive tract,
She belches anally in music act,
To break a lull in conversation.
When vile intrusion pricks her nostril bed,
She, daring not her ‘chief to smudge or blot,
With her bold index digit picks the clot,
And secrets it beneath her chair instead.
Her legs are shaped like Cupid’s lovely bow,
Her skirt’s the string that joins each foot to each.
And when the art of Love her I do teach,
My Cupid’s arrow strings her Cupid’s bow.
So when her arms, in time, toward me shall move,
Then shall I cease at writing poems, and love.
————
Tom Noe is not now, and never has been, the Ohio Republican Party’s misguided fundraiser, found guilty of money laundering on behalf of the 2004 Bush/Cheney campaign and of theft and corruption in Coingate. Tom Noe hates Tom Noe with livid ire for besmirching and bedraggling his name, begorrah.