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Little Boy Blue
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Original Version
Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn,
The sheep’s in the meadow, the cow’s in the corn.
Where is the boy who looks after the sheep?
He’s under a haystack, fast asleep.
Will you wake him? No, not I,
For if I do, he’s sure to cry.
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Revised Version
Little Boy Blue is a cat with a horn,
__A prodigy, steeped in the blues.
Besides his pretensions to ranching and farming,
__He’s gigging and paying his dues.
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Little Boy Blue played so loud and so funky
__The shepherd on duty deferred
From tending the sheep, as he came and he listened,
__And these are the sounds that he heard:
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Be-bop-sha-bam! went the drums, and the trumpet
__Was tootin’ some razzamatazz.
The shepherd exclaimed “It’s the world’s first jam session –
__And Little Boy Blue’s playin’ jazz!”
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The old song “The Birth of the Blues” gives no credit
__To Little Boy Blue or his horn.
Or maybe his fame as a nursery rhyme figure
__Eclipsed how the blue note was born.
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Doug Dawson has written for the U.S. Defense Department and for car and trade magazines and has had his short stories published by Academy of the Heart & Mind, Ariel Chart, Aphelion Webzine, Literary Yard, Scars Publications, The Scarlet Leaf Review and many others and are included in the print anthologies “The Devil’s Doorknob II” and “Potato Soup Journal’s “Best Stories of 2022.” His book “Route 66 – the TV Series, the Highway and the Corvette” will be published by BearManor Media in 2024.
Delightful poem. Thank you!
There is a lot of fun contained in the nursery rhyme revision.
Perfect rhythm in an amusing re-birth for Little Boy Blue. It awakened my memory of the nursery rhyme and of jazz and blues vocabulary, employed with pizzazz. Nice job, Doug.
I just love this fun, toe-tapping grin of a poem to keep my blues at bay. Thank you!