The castles fell out of the sky.

Peter Piper used to love
his pickled peppers so,
but now his penchant
lies in purchased products
(of a leafy and most illegal nature).

Jack B. Nimble and his triplet brothers,
Sprat and the one with the hill endeavor,
ran over the cat and his beloved fiddle.
No more hey-diddle-diddle because of one piddle
with the infamous brown-bagged-bottle.

Mary, Mary curses her contrariness
as she cries over sherries to little Miss Muffett,
“I’ve got a bun in the oven.”
And Jill of the hill tries to get her gossip’s fill with
an ear pressed to the door.

Yankee Doodle and his pony
are now obese from macaroni.
And poor Georgie Porgie,
in for ten-to-forty
for sexual harassment charges.

The other Mary and her little lambs,
once with reputations white as snow,
are stained with the shame
of shoplifting claims.
Girl thief and ewe accomplice disgraced the same.

Mother Goose is so stricken
with the disaster of her children
that she would almost pay for the
happy days of golden years (and eggs)
long past.

The fairytale (honeymoon) is over.
But we will make this new story work somehow.