There’s not a few who think I’m cracked
And part of me in point of fact
Is cracked indeed, though I’m quite sane —
My rib is split and I’m in pain.
As you can guess, I never meant
To suffer such an accident
It wasn’t in a fight or fall;
It couldn’t be foreseen at all.
A friend has asked me all perplexed
If I was being oversexed
Or drinking whisky on the rocks:
The cause was just a cardboard box.
“Outside the box”, I’ve heard folk say
“It’s better if you think that way.”
My thinking, sadly, I applied
To what that huge box had inside
And on the rim I lent my chest
So I could reach down for the rest.
A slip, recovered just too late,
Meant suddenly that all my weight
Was on a narrow strip of bone
That couldn’t bear it on its own
And promptly cracked, I heard it give
In fact the longer that you live
The less your skeleton will bend
And when it breaks it’s slow to mend.
