The Tool Ghoul

Grandpa told me his tool shed was one of a kind
and asked me for a hammer, if I wouldn’t mind.
So I figured a trip to the shed would be great
as I sure didn’t mind since I was only eight.

On the path to the shed I was easily led
and I was no doubt loud enough to wake the dead,
because I was content as my little voice rang:
‘Twas, “If I had a hammer,” I joyously sang.

Then I came to the shed but felt drop in my jaw;
I was totally shocked by the ghoul that I saw.
He was green like in pea soup with cherry red eyes,
and his spiky long ears seemed to be on the rise.

When he looked at me his tongue dropped out like a snake,
(as an eight-year-old, I wondered, “Was I awake?”)
He had gray claws for toes and was odd by all means,
and what was really odd was his mauve cutoff jeans.

He was holding above him a workmanlike tool,
like a large barber’s razor, a blade that looked cruel.
It was pitted and chipped as if broken by spite,
and as he stood there bent-legged he looked a mean sight.

My initial reaction was to run away
but this ghoul with a tool caught me on a good day.
And although his appearance was grotesque, indeed,
in this outré-like ghoul was a childlike plead.

So I pointed to tools that were all strewn about
yet the ghoul looked at me with eyes blazing red doubt.
I made a passing gesture at one antique pick,
but the green face with snake tongue appeared to be sick.

It was then like epiphany given by grace
(and at eight I was even then moved by the face),
that my eyes caught a glimpse of the bench Grandpa used
and then all of a sudden I was not confused.

On the bench was a grinder and thus it rang true
it was one useful tool which this ghoul could make do.
So he sharpened his blade and he rolled up his tongue,
and as he left, “If I had a hammer,” was sung.


36 Lines (Anapestic Tetrameter)
Writer’s Cramp  October 15, 2013