The Inauspicious Beginnings of Goat Boy

His dad was a werewolf, his mum was part-goat.
(Between them they’d have made a rather nice coat)
But instead by the sea, cuddled up on the shore,
They conceived a child like the world had never seen before.

He stood on two legs but had hooves and not feet,
and instead of crying from his crib he would let out a bleat.
Meal times were messy, a sight nature could not surpass,
as he sat in his highchair chewing on grass.

At school he was teased and the children would smirk
as he explained to teacher he’d eaten his own homework.
And his parents lamented and began to regret,
the child they had wanted who was more like a pet.

It wasn’t just the emotional stress of keeping up with the Joneses,
Of explaining how your little boy had eaten their roses,
But there was also all that extra bloody expense,
The feed bags and vets’ bills and the little goat-pen fence,

And his parents, of course, they blamed themselves for this curse,
For this hairy offspring that emptied their purse.
“My dear I’m a werewolf, and you are part-goat,
We’d have been much better off in a rather nice coat!”

“Instead we have a freak child who’s nothing but strife.”
So they came up with a plan to live our their life.
They thought long and hard about this freak-child of a son
If you were in their shoes, what would you have done?

To send him away to pretend he’d never been born?
To leave him penned up in the garden lost and forlorn?

But you couldn’t do that to your offspring your blood,
No, they needed a plan and it had to be good.
Something to alleviate their financial unease.
So they started to milk him and then sold his cheese!

Copyright © Emma Williams