funny rhyming poem - The Fatal Funeral of Uncle Ray

The Fatal Funeral of Uncle Ray by Wilkie Martin

Old Uncle Ray, an absolute glutton,
would stuff his face until he popped a button
or burst his zip -- and he reached immense size
when he took to guzzling deep-fried meat pies.

He wouldn't see his greed was causing him harm,
pooh-poohed those friends trying to raise the alarm,
until the day when his belly had spread
and he could no longer get out of bed.

The doctor called round, suggesting a diet -
Ray just scoffed and said he wouldn't try it.
His life was in danger, the doctor foresaw,
yet never expected he'd fall through the floor.

Large lumps of lardy cake formed his last snack,
the joists gave way with a terrible crack,
and Ray dropped in on his sister Sarah,
who had been his most devoted carer.

Of her funeral, there is little to tell;
a somber occasion, but all went well.
Yet his, the next day, was a disaster -
I can't think of many that were vaster.

The seeds were planted at the very start;
the undertaker played a major part,
for the man they chose was a black-clad creep
who conducted the funeral on the cheap.

On arriving, he gawped and stood aghast -
he'd never set eyes on a corpse so vast.
Throughout all his years, he'd never seen worse -
no way could he squeeze Ray into the hearse.

He stood for a long time, racking his brain,
finally deciding to call in a crane -
he'd seen one used to remove a beached whale
and had no inkling that his plan would fail.

He laid the departed out in a skip.
On moving, it started to swing and slip
and as the cortege drove slowly through town
fifteen pedestrians were crudely mown down.

Two dozen more fell on Cemetery Way -
Twenty-four souls to join Ray in cold clay.
The undertaker rubbed his hands in glee,
as he thought of their funerals - and of his fee.

Ray's grave had to be so deep and so wide
that two of the diggers had collapsed and died,
while the one they left to complete the task
needed to breath from an oxygen mask.

By the time he arrived on his graveside,
Forty-two innocent people had died.
In hindsight, it should have been a warning
of what lay in store for those in mourning.

The skip when lowered just dropped like a stone;
The shock shook everyone through to the bone.
The impact fractured the tectonic plate
and what happened next I can hardly relate.

The ground they stood on began to grumble.
The soil round the grave started to crumble.
The earth rose and buckled, clouds masked the sun,
some might have been spared had they started to run,

but they stood and grieved, the priest presiding,
and failed to spot the graveyard subsiding,
as out of the west a great crack appeared,
a hole opened up. They all disappeared.

Many folk perished, so it's said, the day
of the fatal funeral of Uncle Ray.
I'm only here, because I wasn't there -
though he was family, I just didn't care.

© Wilkie Martin 2012
http://www.wilkiemartin.com

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[wilkiewrites]

Thanks Lynne, much appreciated.

[LinnBHalton]

Another Wilkie special! It's the attention to detail that makes it so special.

[ElmoreLeopard]

Great! I love it when the bird cheeps in just as you get to 'who conducted the funeral on the cheap'.