Heigh ho, heigh ho,

To the bulletin board we go!

Sift through the flyers,

Pick out the liars,

Heigh ho, heigh ho!

First up for you:

Little Bo-Peep Peekaboo

Who had ten magical sheep that each, independently, flew.

Frolicked in the fairy farmers’ fields all day

Til they, following the farmer fairies, flew away!

Off to seek fortune in the farmland of Peru.

Once at market I met one Miss Peekaboo,

Shepherdess she was, and not well-to-do.

The way she earned her rhyme and living

Was by raising subjects to be subject to the art of killing:

Sent lambs to the slaughterhouse

(And for quite a few shillings).

Secondly: (Senile in Denial)

Old King Cole

Was an affable fellow,

For a humanitarian at heart was he!

He taxed (some of) the rich,

And built floors for the poor,

So no homeless folk roamed the streets of Denial, no joke!

But just Last Thursday I heard of a multicolor joker

Who was paid less in Cole’s court than an actor in New York.

T'was said they cracked a controversial joke

Spilling the salary and yolk

Of the king’s favorite Wall Sitter/Street broker

(Of whom it should be noted

That, preceding this, had not once been broke(n)

(Which evokes this quandary over the question of whether the broker was more so broke(n).))

Our Old Cole found fault with what Joker deemed an accidental fall

So then intoned, in foreboding tone, for them to flee

And told them they were blessed, for now they were, in a sense, with life and now job search, more free!

“But surely you jest!”

Oh, t'was the Joker who jested, now you’ve gotten it mixed!

Can you guess the end of this sorry story? I’ll give you a clue, or maybe a few:

I saw this exact guy one frigid afternoon

On the top floor of one grungy refrigerator, minus the door,

Respectively: broke, and in disuse,

On East 54th Street, between Madison and Fifth Avenue.