Left-Wing Poem by Herbert Nehrlich

A lad who hated birds that sing
chopped off a cockatoo's left wing.
The cockatoo was thusly grounded
and soon by hungry cats surrounded.

He anxiously looked left and right
still hoping that he somehow might
escape on foot the threat of death.
An orange cat with feline breath

was grinning now, from ear to ear,
which obviously increased his fear.
Well, in the end he did admit
that time was up and this was it.

He opened then his sharpened beak
and did what he loved most: To speak.
As luck would have it, he was smart,
had studied chemistry and art,

he talked to kill remaining time,
his sermon was, of course in rhyme.
The orange cat was full of class
but suffered from a bit of gas.

She told the others 'with them birds
we wait until they're out of words.'
You guessed it, cats with halitosis
will quickly fall into hypnosis,
so within minutes there was trance,
the monotone had changed all plans.

The cockatoo began to sing
about his missing leftist wing,
and later it became his mission
to be a right-wing politician.