About the Poem

Do you bite the heads of jelly babies before you eat them? And do you think of the jelly baby's feelings as you do it?

Style

Nonsense poem

Length

8 lines

Key Stage

KS2, KS3

Author

Max Scratchmann

The Jelly Baby’s Lament

Oh sing not of the Kookaburra tree or the purple mountains of dawn,
For my love she lies a-bleeding, this cold and frosty morn.
Oh, my love she lies a bleeding, you’ve bitten off her head,
Her syrup flows all down your chin, and soon she will be dead.

We live inside your pocket, our home a cardboard box,
Our elbows jab into our ears like cattle at the docks,
So spare a thought for our kind, damned by agreement tacit,
And dispute our plight with the men in black, who work at Barrett Bassett.