Category Archives: Humour

dVerse Poets – Poetics – Kafka For Kids

Art: Altered books by Susan Hoerth (raidersofthelostart)

dVerse Poetics – a challenge by Amaya to take a line from Kafka as inspiration for a nursery rhyme or other. The line that inspired my poem is from Kafka’s Letter to Oskar Pollak:

“Think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.” 

Little Toby Melancholy

Little Toby Melancholy
didn’t want to play
so, instead he took a book
of new worlds to a tree,
but soon the caramel words
which swirled like serpents free,
did stick to his hands and clothes,
poor little Toby did writhe and grive
as the book turned dark and grim,
and from its pages of murk
appeared a bony finger thin
stabbing at his chest so tight
with raucous moonlight laugh,
then Toby shrieked a desperation
and flung it hard away,
its landing thudded waking him
startled and ever wide,
he glanced the cover slight
which winked at him mad
and little Toby sprang in flight
and ran,
and ran,
and ran.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com