Alice in Wonderland
The Mad Hatter
The March Hare
The White Rabbit
The Queen of Hearts
The Crazymad Writer
Tag Archives: mad
The tea is poured from empty air,
With whiskers twitching in despair!
The clock has struck a purple grin,
Let the nonsense now begin!
A rabbit in a ruff of lace,
With panic written on his face,
Drinks from a cup of floral bone,
While sitting on a velvet throne.
The Hatter grins a jagged tooth,
He’s quite forgotten every truth!
He offers cakes of dust and light,
To keep the morning out of sight.
Poor Alice sits in quiet dread,
While floating teapots soar o’erhead.
The sky is full of spinning gears,
And echoes of a thousand years!
The Cat is but a giant smile,
That stretches for a country mile.
He’s here and there and gone again,
The king of every madman’s pen!
So gulp the steam and eat the spoon,
Beneath the grinning, cosmic moon!
For once you’ve joined this tea-time host,
You’re nothing but a buttered ghost!
The Mad Hatter in Wonderland
Oh, bother and bluster, and cogs in the head!
My teacup is empty, my sanity fled!
A tick-tock of madness, a dizzying spin,
Where is the joy, where does chaos begin?
My eyes are like saucers, my smile’s quite askew,
A day without logic, eternally new!
The steam from my brew whispers secrets untold,
Of moments quite frantic, of stories too bold!
My hat, it’s a shambles, much like my own mind,
With patches of nonsense, for all humankind!
The gears in the ether, they clatter and chime,
Is it teatime forever, or just for a time?
A jumble of trinkets, and teabags that fly,
A world in a muddle, beneath a mad sky!
Though tired and tattered, my spirit still gleams,
For the maddest of thoughts fuel the wildest of dreams!
Baby Hippo and Alice
Alice and the Baby Hippo
Alice once mounted a hippo one day,
Who’d lost his way in a puddle of clay.
He huffed and he snorted and splashed with delight,
While Alice held on with all of her might.
“Faster!” she cried, “to the edge of the sky!”
The hippo just winked with a mud-sparkled eye.
They galloped through rushes and lilies and foam,
Quite certain they’d never find their way home.
Through puddles of puddings and rivers of tea,
They splashed past a fish who was trimming a tree.
A frog waved his bonnet, a duck tipped his hat,
And a snail cried, “Good gracious! She’s riding on that?”
The hippo just chuckled, “I’m only a tot,
But galloping’s easy when you’ve learned the trot.”
And off they went bouncing, through dream upon dream,
Till Alice awoke by a murmuring stream.
Her dress was still damp, her shoes full of sand,
And she whispered, “Next time I shall learn how to land!”
The Unkempt Uncle and the Uninvited Queen
The Unkempt Uncle and the Uninvited Queen
Bartholomew “Barty” Bumble, the Unkempt Uncle, wasn’t a man who sought drama. His sole motivation that particular non-Tuesday was the desperate pursuit of a vanished argyle sock. The trail—a baffling scent of lemon, static electricity, and sheer wrongness—led him through a transforming hedge maze and straight to the Hatter’s infamous table. He’d barely settled in the end seat, still clutching the lonely half of his pair, when the first round of chaos was interrupted.
The air, already thick with riddles and steam, suddenly turned sharp and metallic. A hush fell, save for the frantic sound of the March Hare attempting to hide a very large cake under a very small saucer.
A shrill voice, which could curdle milk from fifty paces, sliced through the air: “WHO HAS DARKENED MY DOMAIN WITH IMPROPER FOOTWEAR?!”
The Queen of Hearts stomped into the clearing. She hadn’t been invited, of course. She never was. The Hatter and the Hare deliberately held their party at the one spot on the lawn where the acoustics made it impossible for her to hear the clatter of teacups. But the sheer gravitational pull of their collective madness was sometimes enough to yank her in anyway. She arrived, not as a guest, but as an angry, unexpected event.
Her gaze, hot and focused, swept past the Hatter’s manic grin, dismissed Alice as merely tolerable, and landed squarely on the newly seated, thoroughly bewildered Barty. Specifically, on the lonely argyle sock clutched in his hand.
“You!” she shrieked, pointing a furious, white-gloved finger. “You are an imperfection! A missing half! An UNFINISHED THOUGHT! And you’re sitting in my sightline!”
Barty, a man accustomed to nothing more threatening than a lukewarm cup of tea, instinctively held the argyle sock out like a peace offering.
“Oh, madam,” he stammered, his spectacles slipping down his nose. “I assure you, I am merely looking for its partner. I—I didn’t mean to sit in your… sightline. Is this yours? It’s quite a distinctive pattern.”
The Queen stopped short. Her face, usually a canvas of pure rage, momentarily froze in confusion. No one ever talked back to her; they usually just started running. And no one had ever offered her a sock.
“A sock?” she bellowed, though a single, momentary twitch in her lip suggested she might have almost giggled at the sheer absurdity. “I wear slippers lined with the crushed velvet of conquered kings! Off with his head! And his sock! And the other sock, too! Though I see you don’t possess the other sock, which is itself a capital offense!”
As the royal guards hesitated, Barty quickly looked around the table, noticing the array of strange, silent attendees who had appeared in his wake.
“Ah, but Your Majesty,” Barty said, emboldened by the sheer illogical nature of his surroundings, “if you cut off my head, who will tell the Hatter the riddle answer? He’s been asking it for ages. A raven and a writing desk, you see.”
The Hatter immediately leaned in. “Do you truly know the answer?”
The Queen, momentarily distracted by the greatest mystery in Wonderland, crossed her arms. “Silence! The riddle is NOT the point! The point is the seating arrangement, which is an insult to the realm! No one sits in a chair uninvited!”
Barty peered over his shoulder. “Actually, I think the gentleman just behind me has been here for three weeks and hasn’t had a single sip of tea. If anyone’s the offense, it’s him.”
The Queen swiveled, her attention diverted to a brand new, and entirely legitimate, target of fury. She had forgotten all about the sock.
Barty winked at the Hatter, who gave him a thumbs-up. The March Hare nervously handed Barty the grandfather clock cake. The Unkempt Uncle, the only man to survive a direct, uninvited encounter with the Queen, took a bite of the cake. It tasted exactly like six o’clock. He was still confused, still sock-less, but no longer quite so uninvited. He was now, simply, a permanent part of the chaos.
Steampunk Alice and a Very Mad Hatter
In cobbled lanes where gears convene,
Stood Alice, goggled, quite a queen.
Her skirts of bronze, her boots so grand,
A clockwork wonder, wand in hand.
Beside her, Hatter, wild and bright,
With fiery hair and eyes alight.
A grin so vast, a teethy show,
“More tea, more steam! Where did time go?”
His top hat brimmed with ticking gears,
Ignoring all sensible fears.
For in this world of brass and steam,
A very mad and wondrous dream!
I wish I’d looked after me brain
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me brain,
And spotted the perils of strain,
All the thoughts that I thought,
And the knowledge I’d sought,
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me brain.
*
I wish I’d been that much more willin’,
And gave me grey matter a chillin’,
To pass up the worryin’,
And constant hurrying,
And just gave me mind a good fillin’.
*
When I think of the stress that I’ve trekked,
And the problems I solved without a heck,
Anxiety, big and little,
Made me mind, oh, so brittle,
Me neurons are horribly fecked.
*
My Mother, she told me no end,
“A sharp mind is always your friend”
I was young then, and brainless,
Me focus so careless,
I never had much time to spend.
*
Oh I showed them me quick wits so bright,
I flashed them about with delight,
But constant overthinkin’,
And lack of deep sinkin’,
Played havoc with me mental delights.
*
If I’d known I was paving the way,
To confusion, and memory’s decay,
The pain of the dreadin’,
And the fog of the headin’,
I’d have thrown all me worries away.
*
So I sit in the neurologist’s chair,
And I hear his diagnosis in despair,
Telling me what I should have done,
And the rest I should have won,
“It’ll only last,” he’ll say, “for a few more days.”
*
How I laughed at me Mother’s forgettin’,
As she struggled with the past she was lettin’,
But now comes the reckonin’
It’s me it is beckonin’
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me brain.
The Ballad of Dizziness Day
The Ballad of Dizziness Day
by the Crazymad Poet of Ballykillduff
Oh the world did sway on a curious day,
When the clouds spun ’round like socks in a fray,
And Ballykillduff, in its charming old way,
Woke up to find balance had wandered away.
Sean the Ram did a somersault flip,
The postman delivered a letter to a skip,
The church bell chimed with a hiccup and blip,
And the milk turned itself into strawberry whip.
Mrs McFadden clung tight to a tree,
“That’s my third bush this morning,” said she.
A goat rode a bicycle (accidentally),
And the vicar did cartwheels, shouting “Wheeeee!”
The baker rolled out of his shop like dough,
Shouting, “All my baguettes have learned to go!”
The ducks flew backwards in uneven rows,
And a sheep tried to tango with Farmer Joe’s toes.
Young Nora O’Bannigan spun in a whirl,
Chasing her braid like a dizzy young squirrel.
She tripped on a hedgehog, collided with Pearl,
Then shouted, “I’ve seen three versions of the world!”
The Council convened by the village green pond,
Where they’d buried the Beacon of Anti-Spin Bond.
With goggles, a chicken, and ceremony fond,
They summoned its power with a mystical wand.
Old McGroggin raised high the gold cone,
(While humming a strangely off-key baritone),
And the village fell still with a satisfied groan,
As balance returned—at least to the stone.
But the wobble, my friends, still comes once in a spell,
With tales of the time when Miss Bridie fell
Into a wheelbarrow halfway to Kells,
Still claiming she met a dimension called “Smell.”
So here’s to the Day of the Great Bally Sway,
Where gravity quit and ran far away—
If you’re ever in town when your legs go astray,
You’ll know you’ve arrived on… Dizziness Day!
The Pickled Newt Incident
“The Pickled Newt Incident”
(As told in hushed tones by woodland creatures and highly suspicious teapots.)
In a village called Splotz, near the Crackling Cliffs’ root,
Lived an elf known as Fle—
And a jar marked “Newt.”
It sat on a shelf marked “Do Not Unseal!”
Right under the sign that read “Definitely Real.”
It bubbled, it gurgled, it muttered in rhyme,
And occasionally leaked a peculiar green slime.
“Now don’t touch the jar,” said old Fle with a wink.
“It once tried to marry a badger, I think.”
But Alice, quite curious (and rightly so),
Said, “Why keep a pickled newt sealed long ago?”
Fle sighed, then he paced, then he sat on a drum.
(He sits anywhere when his knees go numb.)
And thus he began, with a wiggle and groan,
To tell of the night he’d once meddled… alone.
“I was younger then—only two hundred and ten,
With a broom, a balloon, and a borrowed goose pen.
I’d just brewed a soup made of socks and some glue,
When a newt in a cravat said, ‘Good evening to you.’He asked for a snack, so I offered some cheese—
But he sneezed on my cat and dissolved half the trees.
Then he danced on my roof, ate my weather forecast,
And declared he would marry my gramophone… fast.So I pickled him, neatly, in vinegar brine,
With mustard, three cloves, and a touch of moonshine.
For ninety-nine years he’s been floating in stew,
Occasionally shouting, ‘I do, I do, I doooo!’And that, dear Alice, is why—if you please—
One must never serve cheese to amphibians with knees.”Alice blinked twice, then looked toward the shelf.
And slowly edged farther away from the elf.
“Is he dangerous?” she whispered, aghast.Fle shrugged.
“Only if he gets out of the jar made of glass.”Just then, the jar rattled, and a soft burp was heard—
Followed closely by a very rude word.
Fle sprang to his feet (as far as he could),
And stuffed the jar under a cloak made of wood.“No more questions,” he said, “about pickling fate.
Let’s talk about teapots. Or how I once flew a plate.”
The World’s Gone Bonkers (Since We All Went Online)
The World’s Gone Bonkers (Since We All Went Online)
A Crazymad Poem by Someone Who’s Had Enough Wi-Fi
Once upon a saner time,
We’d write with pens—imagine the crime!
Now thumbs do tap and fingers swipe,
And talking’s swapped for “liking” hype.
The dog has TikTok, Mum’s on Zoom,
Dad live-streams himself in the loo.
Gran’s gone viral doing squats,
With hashtags like #KnitYourOwnTeaPots.
The fridge has Wi-Fi, the toaster too,
It knows your name, and your blood type too.
The mirror tells you you look sad—
(“Apply more blush, you silly lad!”)
Ding! goes the phone.
Ping! goes the watch.
Beep! says the toaster.
Snap! goes your crotch—
Because your smart jeans now detect
Too many pies? That gets a text.
People walk while texting fast,
Right into bins and duck ponds, SPLASH!
They film themselves while falling in,
Then cry, “Oh wow, I’ll post again!”
The baby’s named @Lil_Snacc,
He’s got a filter, six-pack abs.
The cat’s an influencer now,
With brand deals for organic chow.
We used to talk. We used to think.
Now Siri tells us when to blink.
“Alexa, what’s the point of life?”
She answers, “Please repeat your wife.”
Our minds are now a cloud-based mess,
We Google every minor stress.
Can’t sleep? There’s apps! Can’t cry? There’s bots!
Can’t love? Just swipe until it rots.
AI writes your granny’s will.
A drone drops off your sleeping pill.
We’ve screens for eyes, and wires for veins,
And autocorrect rewrites our brains.
Oh world, oh world, you pixelated freak!
You’ve swapped the meadow for a selfie streak.
The birds don’t tweet, the bees don’t hum—
They’re on Threads now, posting “Here we come!”
So switch it off—go out, get lost!
Climb a tree, no signal cost.
But if you fall—don’t dare complain…
Just film it, post it, dance again!
The Crazymad Writer Writes Again 