First-Time Babysitter Poem by C Richard Miles

Frantic thoughts are wildly flitting
Round my mind, where they are fitting
Like unravelled knotted knitting,
Into ever-greater space.
For my teeth are tightly gritting
As I think about outwitting
Kids, who I am babysitting,
Just before they wreck the place.

For their parents left unworried
After having had me ferried
In a taxi, as they hurried
To go out and grab some bites
Of some grub quite hot and curried
But, whilst from their monsters they’re rid,
I am heading to be buried
By their devious little tykes.

For they’ve used this rare occasion
To cause me wild consternation:
They can’t hide their mad elation
As they plot to do me in,
For as they begin to play, shorn
Of a sense of concentration,
You could decorate the nation
With the paint spilt from the tin.

Now I really want to slaughter
Their demented demon daughter,
Though I really shouldn’t ought to
Use more than the needed force,
For she poured, like pools of water,
On the floor to make a sorta
Slick of goo you’d never thought a
Child could make from Worcester Sauce.

Though I never have been fitter,
She must know that I can’t hit her,
As I struggle to outwit her
And to keep a smiling face,
As she strews the glue and glitter
Over me, her babysitter,
Though I really must admit her
Skill deals Dali second place.

Though I nearly started fainting
When she asked to do face painting
I could hardly put complaints in
When I’d not seen her before
But it didn’t seem the sane thing
When her brother did the same thing
With the contents of the paint tin
Down the door and on the floor.

There’s a pounding in my heart, it
Seems that if I don’t keep sharp, it
Looks like that Axminster carpet
In its glamorous shade of green
Will turn to a tacky tar-pit
As with gum and glue they mark it
And will need a crate of Harpic
Undilute, to make it clean.

Now they want to use the kitchen
To play “Hunt the wicked witch” in
But I feel their fingers itching
For the drawer to find some spoons
And I feel they will be stitching
Up a plan to make me pitch in
All the contents of the fridge, in
Case a feeding frenzy looms.

Now I have a sinking feeling
As they illustrate the ceiling
With the jelly they’ve been stealing
From the bowl they went and found
And I think I will be dealing
With a sight that sends me reeling
Since it fell, unhindered, peeling
Off and squidging on the ground.

Now has come their time for sleeping
Even then I have the creeping
Thoughts that they are simply keeping
Their best plans for later on
And, as down the stairs I’m leaping,
I can feel their eyeballs peeping
Round the bedroom as they’re heaping
More disasters to be done.

Now unpleasant thoughts are flashing
Round my brain, as I hear crashing
From above and end up dashing
Up the stairs, as in a race,
For the blessed boy is bashing
Seven bells from sister, splashing
Tears in puddles, as she’s slashing,
With sharp fingernails, his face.

As I separate the fighter
From his sister, then the blighter
Bares his teeth and start to bite her
Like a vampire seeking blood.
My complexion now gets whiter
As his sister then grips tighter
Round his throat as if she might a-
-ttempt to do him in for good.

And I hope the little horrors
Will regret it, when tomorrow’s
Reckoning comes and mother borrows
Next door neighbour’s walking stick
To remind them that it follows
If they act like that, their sorrows
Will be greater than Gomorrah’s
When they feel it sharp and quick.

But it’s not the open season,
For that crime, severe as treason,
Is now banished, for some reason
You can’t thump unruly kids.
So until someone can seize on
Other ways to find the keys and
Make them be entirely decent,
They’ll just act the way they did.

Though they’re only six and seven,
It has hardly been like heaven
And I hope their parents, Trev and
Dawn, return to save my neck.
It is quarter past eleven
And I hope that they are clever
And they choose that they will never
Ring again to have me back.