Grimbeau

 

Lopsided head, dead on the sloping strand.

 

Smooth, sea polished shingle sizzles around

 

The victim of a mindless, callous hunt.

 

Transparently, he was born a mutant runt

 

Misfortune dogged him from his strangled birth

 

Until annihilation put an end to Bert

 

When it came the blow was random

 

His assailants worked in tandem

 

And cornered him beneath the pier

 

And despatched him swift without a care

 

The denounement was not so smooth

 

As they kicked him in the ocean crude

 

Tefal sank but not to the bottom

 

His killers thought he was forgotten

 

But he was borne by longshore and by rip

 

And in Pevensey he rested in deep silt

 

That is until a passing fisher digging for lug

 

His preserved remains out he dug

 

‘What’s up’ said Tefal examining his head

 

‘You’ with saline brevity the fisher said

 

‘These twenty years I have been there

 

Dead and happy without fear or care.

 

Why do you give me such a stare?’

 

‘A hermit crab is crawling from your nose,

 

And there is distinct molusculation of your toes.

 

My name is Fred and if I might

 

Let’s go and show you to my wife

 

She is a fan of oddity

 

That is why she married me.’

 

So, from the strand they did repair

 

Tefal picking worms from ear and hair

 

And went to Fred’s house and went right in

 

And Fred’s wife gasped ‘Well, look at him!’

 

Fred explained the circumstances of his discovery

 

And Mrs Fred decided on Tefal’s recovery

 

Was plovers eggs and strawberry jam

 

And slices of her homemade ham

 

That she had cured with her own fair hand

 

With the leg Fred found last year

 

washed up upon the strand.