The Crime of the Century
by cricketjeff on June 23, 2009. © Jeff Green, All rights reserved
Around the world when Christmas morning calls
Before the dawn a mournful wail erupts.
If pretty parcels opened by the smalls
Contain a fault that certainly disrupts.
No dreadful noise when trigger grip is squeezed,
No halting flight that ends on sister’s bed
But disappointed faces of the teased,
And parents who’ll soon wish that they were dead.
Humanity requires that all obey
A simple rule that everybody knows.
Offending givers must be made to pay
For dishing out this worst of Yuletide woes.
No readers of my verse would be so rotten
To give a toy with “batteries forgotten”!
English