The hare did declare, with intent to offend,
“See you at the finish line my slow-moving friend”
to which, said the tortoise in a kind of outburst,
“Not if I bloody well see you there first!”
And thus, they set off, with the blow of a whistle
The tortoise, like treacle, the hare, like a missile
Uphill and down dale, the hare made his way
Then he stopped, in his tracks, for a sleep in the hay
“Why run so fast when there’s plenty of time?
That tortoise takes fifty for each minute of mine!”
And then, with a giggle, the cocky wee shit
pulled out some wool and he started to knit
At long last the tortoise arrived at the scene
“You may be ahead, but you needn’t be mean!”
The hare, laughing uproariously, replied
“You can’t win a race if you’re not qualified!”
The tortoise, however, was nobody’s fool
He didn’t take chances, for one, as a rule
In his shell he had hidden a lethal contagion
to be boldly unleashed when he made his evasion
He took out the teeny, tiniest of vials
and, pretending to stop and chat for a while,
poured out the contents onto the hay
then got up announcing “I’ll be on my way”
No one suspected the hare was now dead,
astonished the tortoise had won the race instead
The moral of this tale may be a surprise
for it isn’t ‘don’t ever believe your own eyes’
or ‘slow and steady wins the race’
or ‘cheeky wee bastards end in disgrace’
or even that ‘brains are better than brawn’
but rather ‘beware the dangers of science
and a sociopathic tortoise’s act of defiance’
POETRY FESTIVAL. Submit to site for FREE. Submit for actor performance. Submit poem to be made into film. 