Down To See The Monster
Contributed by
Nicolas Papaconstantinou on 25/12/08
I’m going down to the bottom of the garden
Holding a balloon on a string.
The balloon is floating.
I’ve never seen one that floats.
This is a good Christmas party.
I’m going down to the bottom of the garden
To the bottom of the garden shed
To see the monster.
I have to stand on my tip-toes
To open the door.
This is what it’s like
When you are only five.
And a half!
In the shed, I draw a big face on the balloon.
In felt-tip.
It makes a horrid squeaking noise that I like.
And then the monster talks to me.
It uses the face that I drew,
But I have to do it’s voice for it.
Balloon faces can’t talk, silly!
We talk for ages. The monster is my friend.
He tells me to do bad things.
Dan Lester
A great piece- the use of a child’s voice makes the sinister overtones more effective.
Reply
Nicolas Papaconstantinou
Thanks, Dan.
I was going to keep it a lot shorter than this, because I wasn’t sure that I’d got the child’s voice quite… childey enough.
You made me feel better with that comment!
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davidbaillie
Creepy!
Reply
Nicolas Papaconstantinou
Hm, is it? I am just so used to expecting little kids to be like this that I’m kind of used to it by now…
;o)
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Andrew Cheverton
A lovely, lovely cadence to this one.
The “And a half!” line is wonderful.
Reply
Nicolas Papaconstantinou
Thanks, sir! As you know, I always slip into tone poems when my time is tight, but I liked the idea behind this, which made it a lot easier…
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Rol
That is really NASTY. And for Christmas Day too – excellent!
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