Poems by the New McGonagall

By Tomas Mc Rae, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, ©1988

hen I acted out the role of the World’s Best Bad Poet on the Walkways at Brisbane’s WORLD EXPO 88 I added a few poems of my own in similar genre.

Here is one I still remember.

On The Cane Toad Menace

“Dear Father, prithee, what is that laid flat upon the road?”

“Don’t touch the nasty thing, my lad! It is a squashed cane toad.

Those slimy, ghastly, horrid things are a pest in South Queensland,

Examples of imported beasts that got totally out of hand.

Imported from Hawaii in 1935

To feed upon the beetles that on sugar cane do thrive.

But soon this awful import throughout our State had spread,

And when it found a native frog it quickly killed it dead.

The beetles were ignored by this asset to our nation.

Instead of being eaten up they increased in population.

Toads meanwhile spread out round wherever they did please

And even sat by beehives consuming all the bees.

Cane toads are most venemous to all our native life,

And even deaths of cats and dogs due to them are quite rife.”

“Oh, Father, it distresses me that such things are running loose!

Now tell me truly, I implore, are the things of any use?”

“Well, Hippies smoke the dry skins in order to get high.

Two puffs of a cane toad reefer sends anyone to the sky.

Or I know of blokes who stuff them as tourist souvenirs,

And for practising your golf swing, the cane toad has no peers.

Most interesting of all uses I have found as yet

Are elderly ladies keeping one as a most unusual pet.”

“Oh, Father mine, you tell me much in this our wise converse!

Now tell me what’s its purpose within our universe?”

“You ask too many questions, Son, allow me for to note.

Shut up or I’ll take that bloody toad and stuff it down yer throat!”