Headless Chicken

The following is rather gory

but I think you’ll enjoy the story

of Lloyd P. Olson and his bird;

the strangest tale you’ve ever heard.

When Lloyd cut off a rooster’s head,

he noticed it was not quite dead:

the chicken jumped and flapped and danced.

Old Lloyd applauded, quite entranced.

His bird had risen quite Christlike

but Lloyd just named the chicken Mike.

The next day Mike was still alive.

The year was 1945

and Colorado farmer Lloyd

knew what he had and so he toyed

with dreams of local sideshow fame

and so gave up the poultry game

and Lloyd and Mike took to the road

and quickly found the money flowed

wherever freaks and geeks sideshowed.

Lloyd’s rooster was the motherlode!

Lloyd’s wife Clara joined the team

and helped with Mike’s daily regime

of droppered water, liquid food

and getting rich and being shrewd.

They had to keep their fowl alive

if their careers were to survive.

Knowing Mike was their paycheck,

they suckered mucus from his neck

with a sterilised syringe

and though that image makes you cringe,

I wonder just what you might do

as moolah started to accrue

with all the sideshow ballyhoo.

You’d baste that rooster mucus too.

For eighteen months from state to state,

with their decapitated mate,

Lloyd and Clara lived like kings

until, in Saratoga Springs,

awaking in their hotel room

they found Mike’s neck all full of spume.

Lloyd freaked but Clara freaked out more!

Lloyd searched their bags. He searched the floor

but only found they’d come a cropper.

They’d lost their mucus-sucking dropper!

Clara watched their bird conk out

and, panicked, waved her arms about,

truly gutted, truly stricken,

flapping like a headless chicken

and so the miracle met its end.

Poor Lloyd P Olsen lost his friend

as Mike went up to chicken heaven.

The year was 1947

but Headless Mike is not forgotten.

No, though his fame was misbegotten,

it endures still until this day:

In Colorado, every May

a festival is held for Mike

where people, young and old alike,

celebrate their prized halfwit.

I recommend you Google it.

This poem is a formless mess.

It’s lousy and pure silliness.

That’s plain enough for all to see

but hopefully you might agree

it may not glitter but it’s gold:

The Greatest Headless Chicken Story Ever Told.