As A Child I Always Thought Too Much Poem by Patti Masterman

As a child I always thought too much;
And it invariably screwed my life up:
My parents asked me; still quite small,
If I wanted a piano or an organ to play?
Greedy pig that I always was, though
I still could not imagine having a huge piano
All to myself; but the calculating little self of me
Wishing always to please; never to cost
Money or cause trouble, reasoned that something
So large as a piano must cost millions of dollars;
I didn't want my family destitute in order to please me
And so I said, that an organ was always preferable
Also I had never heard of organ lessons;
But I knew piano lessons were quite expensive.
I hadn't figured on the thing actually appearing though-
Coming to live in my own house with me.
Sure enough; on my next birthday
The horrid creature appeared, with two keyboards
One upstairs and one downstairs;
Chord keys, vibrato; the whole shebang
I was so downcast; when it hit me I could have had
A real live piano, instead of this creeping horror
Which brought to mind skeletal old men
In dank mouldy suits, playing at midnight
In accompaniment to bells ringing out wakes of the dead..
I pretended to be happy and, desperate for music
Reasoned that organs were perfectly Halloween all year long;
Spent hours upon hours pressing one depressing chord
After another; sort of a central fugue, to decry my unending stupidity.
Today the organ resides under the stairs;
A mobile curse that no doubt will follow me
To the graveyard even, and probably some intrepid person
Will compose a requiem mass for me, upon it
To escort me to my eternal rest:
Hopefully that at last will be free of organs.

And I had to wait to write this
Until my parents were both dead; as it were no use
To punish them further for their ever kind intentions.