Tiger's tale sumpin

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

Tiger's Tale

Tiger danced across the moonlight,
bringing nighttime dreams for naught
He ate the sandman soundly,
for dreams aren't what they're taught

In Tiger's dreamland paradise
where children's minds are sought
for feeding Tiger's memories
with visions tight and taut.

For Tiger lives on innocence
and steals what dreams he can,
and gives back black and evil things,
catastrophic contraband!

Tiger found the village Koriborg
alone within the trees,
and found their dreams of innocence
filled with tasty subtleties.

He listened to the nighttime sounds
that whet his appetite,
until his hunger grew voracious,
and he leapt into the night.

Tiger vaulted through the windows
wherever he would find
a child, waif, somnambulist,
or someone he could blind

with terror stark and predisposed
to jellify a mind.
Tiger hissed his nighttime stories,
to those he thought were kind.

And those who heard the Tiger's Tale
awoke forever changed.
Innocence forever gone,
Their lives were rearranged.

They stumbled out of cobbled huts
rubbing at their eyes
and assaulting neighbors near and dear
with vitriolic lies.

The Village elders saw the change
that was taking all their folk
and decided they must take a stand
before another sleeper woke.

So they went into a graveyard
to retrieve the newly dead,
and dressed them all in night-clothes
then tucked them into bed.

And Tiger, who was up all night
was sleeping all this while.
He finally awoke at dusk
purring with a smile;

"I'll have you all to-night my dears,
your dreams forever mine,
I'll give you sin and recompense
for what you leave behind!"

So to the window he did leap,
to trade his awful screams,
he did not know he dined with death
when he ate the dead man's dreams.

The corpse consumed poor Tiger's will
and danced into the street
where the Elders burned him brightly,
and Tiger died in his defeat.

End


Copyright 2003 used by permission.