How I Got Rich

How I Got Rich and What Happened Then I used to eat my lunch with groups of businessman from Campbell's Soups. We drank a drink at lunch each day Of Coca-Cola mixed with hay And talked of pending corporate plans And willow-haired orangutans. I spent a lot of time this way At doing things that were not play. But while I was away at work My wife went just a bit berserk. So I gave my wife a giant tome To keep her company at home. I simply, clearly just was not – That is to say – at home a lot. Though fun we had when I was there Tossing cookies in the air Or watching Dodgers playing Sox On multi-colored faceless clocks. We did these things so much, you see Because we were so rich were we. I made my money selling stuff Like pitted prunes and candied snuff. I planted seeds from seedless grapes And sold the sprouts as seafood crepes. I sold some coffee in a cup And leased a fork to drink it up. I sold a man a pair of lamps With perforated ceiling clamps. I bought exotic types of booze And sold it all to polish shoes. I grew some trees from stale eggs Which fruited beer in gallon kegs. I bought a candle and some wax; I spun them into purple flax; Then wrote it off as income tax And stole my lawyer's Cracker Jacks! I plucked the feathers from a fish And sold the rest as lic-or-ish. I sold them all in Topenish To a man named Cavendish. He ate it with a real flair, A certain regal, haughty air. I made bold plans to tyrannize A northern Spanish enterprise In grapefruit-palms and dates and figs And maladjusted corkscrew pigs. (Alas it failed, sad say, But I got them anyway.) And when I died, I died in style Laughing smugly all the while They put my coffin in its crypt And read some Damoclean script. I went away at last to see The Gates of Heaven welcome me. God was there, beside the Gate. He said I was a little late. I bowed my head, apologized, Wondered if he realized The angels were all out on strike; I couldn't drive; I had to hike. Then a soul ran right past me As though he simply couldn't see. Then another did the same And thousands more - a horde - they came! They pushed me rudely to the side And God told me that I had lied. Well, okay, I hadn't hiked. I thought that slow, and so I biked. As from his Book of Rules He read, “Tsk tsk-tsk tsk-tsk tsk,” God said. So PICKED up I my bags and left For that damnéd lower cleft.