Surprise Ending

There was once a man. He’d always wanted to write, But his biggest failing was That he wasn’t very bright. Whenever he started On a story or a plot, Before he could pen it He simply forgot What he had thought earlier And he wasn’t very wise So all he wanted was that The end be a surprise. And he made up plots and tales Funny, sad and intense But in the end he found that None of them made any sense For follow as he might all grammar He could never be concise And what is more, the ending Was never a surprise. Yet he cherished dreams Of becoming famous and great Of writing beautiful stories Of defying his impending fate But, for all his boldness He could never roll the dice And his stories never ended In a nail-biting surprise. He told his tales to children He tried them on every friend But they never gasped at The crucial part, the end. He sent them off to editors Of magazines of acclaim But they all sent the stories back Saying the ending was all the same. He tried to write a book too But in the middle he got stuck And he wasn’t very clever So he simply cursed his luck Then finally he gave up And wallowed in self-despair He felt life was being hard on him He felt it wasn’t fair. Then one of his friends suggested That if he really had to write He needn’t just write stories To prove his wit and might. He could simply write a cookbook Or an instruction manual too Or a traveller’s guide to touring A place like Timbuktu Now the man wasn’t very brilliant But he could recognise good advice When he saw it, so he took it Though he wasn’t very wise And he wrote a self-help book on Coping with writer’s block It became a national bestseller Every bookstore ran out of stock. And he made pots of money Because it was reprinted thrice And he was always very glad He took his friend’s advice So now if you ask his opinion He looks very condescending And smiles, and says, “to write a book Who needs a surprise ending?”