Mosquito

Mosquito

BY J. PATRICK LEWIS
I was climbing up the sliding board
When suddenly I felt
A mosquito bite my bottom
And it raised a big red welt.
So I said to that mosquito,
“I’m sure you wouldn’t mind
If I took a pair of tweezers
And I tweezered your behind!”
He shriveled up his body
And he shuffled to his feet,
And he said, “I’m awfully sorry
But a skeeter’s got to eat!
Still, there are mosquito manners,
And I must have just forgot ’em.
And I swear I’ll never never never
Bite another bottom.”
But a minute later Archie Hill
And Buck and Theo Brown
Were horsing on the monkey bars,
Hanging upside down.
They must have looked delicious
From a skeeter’s point of view
‘Cause he bit ’em on the bottoms,
Archie, Buck and Theo too!
You could hear ’em goin’ HOLY!
You could hear ’em goin’ WHACK!
You could hear ’em cuss and holler,
Goin’ smack, smack, smack.
A mosquito’s awful sneaky,
A mosquito’s mighty sly,
But I never never never
Thought a skeeter’d tell a lie.
J. Patrick Lewis, “Mosquito” from Two-Legged, Four-Legged, No-Legged Rhymes, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright © 1991 by J. Patrick Lewis. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.
Source: Two-Legged, Four-Legged, No-Legged Rhymes (Alfred A. Knopf, 1991)