Rats in the Cellar

Rats in the cellar, squirrels in the tree, things aren't the same as they used to be. When I left for school with my li'l lunch pail, I didn't expect a penguin to swallow a whale. Such an injustice, I've never seen, a cantaloupe falsely imprisoned a bean. It's unheeded screams, uncontrolled laughter, when it's trolls that live happily ever after. Doors off their hinges, pancakes are stacked, biscuits are burning, windows are cracked. Termites in the baseboards, rabbits that fly, pigs that regularly take to the sky. Voices that whisper, mad dogs that bite, winds that go howling and look for a fight. Wrapped in cellophane, mixed in a blender, taped up in cardboard and returned to sender.  Rainbows and ravens, kaleidoscope dreams, leafless branches, gallows lit by moonbeams.   Music boxes, pink ribbons and bows, tags come on packages; tags come on toes. Curtains lifted, sick, unsavory scenes, gear wheels in gear wheels run strange machines. Dissected, disowned and double-downsized, unaided, unacknowledged and unrecognized.    Puzzles, conundrums that cannot be solved, water plus turpentine make witches dissolve.    Pimentos are diced, harsh words are spoken, nightmares are jumbled; eggshells are broken.    Lost in the doldrums, eyeballs protrude, walking on blisters, a horse latitude. Spineless jellyfish, lackeys and flunkies, silver tongued vultures, branch swinging monkeys.   Experts and pundits, paid authorities, Kool-Aid in canisters, down on your knees. Bishops take pawns, the fat lady sings, fires ablaze on black nights with kings.   Shattered stars, fragmented stones, shining splinters, bleak, burning bones.    Songs without meaning, songs without words, sung by unseen phantoms and silent birds.    Refrigerators with pictures nobody knows, eyes staring back, no answers disclose. Spiders and spinning bicycle wheels, buffalos, bandits, and slippery seals. Electric toothbrushes, electric chairs, lethal injections, pushed down the stairs.    Pieces on the floor, a sad state of disarray, the gift you've left me is insanity's bouquet. You stole my cookies, pilfered my cat, laughed at me roundly and turned me down flat.  Mice it in the attic go chitter chatter, have I lost my wits or gone mad as a hatter?