Poor Phil---this one was FUN!!!

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Open Poetry #21

Poor Phil---this one was FUN!!!

VAS
Member Rara Avis

since 2000-11-16

Posts 7450
Oregon

0 posted 2002-08-02 12:09 PM

a great way to start bill-payin' day

Poor Phil

there’s a poem about Sarah Cynthia Stout
who wouldn’t take the garbage out

well, this is a poem bout a man named Phil
who would not pay the garbage bill

in fact he’d not pay any sir,
not dollars to him, nor cents to her

the bills piled high by the kitchen sink
next to dishes and garbage that made them stink

they reached the ceiling and then the floor
that’s where they landed, behind the door

a breeze came up and blew them round
until ‘twas hard to be eas’ly found

they spread across the dining room
and narrowly ‘scaped the ‘lectric broom

and then they spilled to the easy chair
quite near where Phil set up his lair

across the carpet along the sill
pretty soon they buried poor lonesome Phil

creditors called and phoned and knocked
then the police came out with great big rocks

hammered and shouted and tossed and strew
until they found Phil, ‘neath a paper slough

everyone in the neighborhood
saw Phil had come to nary a good

they mopped up Phil and the piles of bills
feeling queasy of tongue and wrought with chills

the moral t’the story, now mark my word,
just pay those bills the minute they’re heard

buried in debt, just isn’t fun
not for you or me, or anyone.

©August 2, 2002

Sarah...from Shel Silverstein's poem of that title.

Whether on the shoal or on the shore,
I'll seek the lighthouse evermore.