DAVID OODLE'S DOODLE

A poem
by

B F Clark

Illustrated by
Kevin Plottner

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audio
David Oodle
was apt to doodle
While talking on the phone.
While half his brain was engrossed in talk,
The other would start to roam,
Drawing squiggles with wiggles,
Whirls and squirls,
Most intricate in their design,
Shaded and cross-hatched
With such finesse, that
Picasso might say, "Is that mine?".

 

 

 

 

                      
On
ending the talking
His fingers stopped walking,
That is, until one fateful day,
The doodling half of David's brain
Got totally carried away...

He'd started a doodle
That looked like a noodle.
The usual kind of thing.
But when trying to finish
The strangest thing is
His fingers would just not give in!

Now, you'd figure this caper
Would end, when the paper was full
And he'd run out of space.
But in no time at all
He'd doodled the wall
And was drawing all over the place!

The ceiling was covered,
The floor was smothered
with mazes and daisies and squares.
He'd doodled the hallway
Both this way and that way
Then he doodled the stairs!

Well some may think
You'd run out of ink
If you used the same pen all the time,
And this tale is a lie,
But I'll tell you why
David's pen drew an infinite line.

You know how a spider
Has something inside her
For spinning an infinite web?
Well David's pen had some kind of 'Zen'
Which drew ink from the thoughts in his head!

So with ideas forthcoming,
The ink kept running
And all David would do was think
Of a new kind of curl,
A colourful squirl,
And there, in his pen,
Would be ink!

So now the skeptics among you
Who figured the fun you
Could have with only one pen
Was restricted by ink
and not by think,
Had better be guessing again.

 

 

 


Now, back to the story,
Where were we? I'm sorry.
Oh yes, we had gone up a flight.
Well, needless to say,
David doodled his way
Through the bedroom,
The closets,
The night.

Without any sleeping or resting or eating
He doodled on all but his mouse,
So he made the decision
To continue his mission
And took his doodling outside the house.

Well it didn't take long
For folks coming along
To notice what David was doing
And say,
"Well, what a disgrace
To doodle his place.
It makes it look like a
ruin".

But then came a man
Who, the world, would scan
For interesting art, something new,
And when he saw the display
He walked right up to say,
"Hi David, I'm Ted.
How d'you do".

Well when Ted expounded
How exciting he found it
And he thought that doodling was neat,
David agreed
for art, and no fee
He would doodle the shoes on Ted's feet.

How was David to know
Where're Ted would go
People would exclaim all the time,
"Wow, Look at those shoes!
The reds, greens and blues.
Do you think he would do it to mine?"

Before very long,
David's doodling was on
The footwear of all to be seen.
Then one day came a letter
That said that he'd better
Get ready to doodle for the Queen.

Now whoever would credit
David's doodling habit
Would take him to a palace.
But he began to wonder,
What if he should blunder,
And doodle the legs of Queen Alice? !

 

 

Soon the day came
And David's name
Was the hottest thing under the Sun.
Cameras rolled in
To see him begin
The most delicate doodle he'd done.

From Ghana to Greece,
Nicaragua to Nice,
People tuned in just to see
How good was his doodle,
And if you'd seen it, then you'd all 
Certainly agree....

That Queen Alice was beaming
From the floor to the ceiling,
Her shoes were resplendent and fine,
And there just was no stopping
All the dignitaries watching
From saying, "Do mine" and "Do mine" and "Do mine!".

Wiping sweat from his brow,
David was now
A hero, the 'King of Doodle'.
He was toast of the land
Which was more than he'd planned,
But denying it would've been futile.

Well, moving on from that day,
David doodled his way
Through countries,
Some big and some small,
But then came a request
From so far east, it was west!,
To doodle the Great China Wall.

"The Great Wall of China?"
Said David, "I'm kind of
Honoured to do such a thing.
But to do it all,
Both sides of the wall,
We should check with those folks in Beijing.


Though trying to hide it
The Chinese were delighted
That David would come to their land.
They were most excellent hosts
And made all kinds of toasts
At banquets most high and most grand.

Soon, early one morning,
Stretching and yawning,
He felt it was time he began.
So with plenty of Zen and his magical pen
He commenced at the end near Japan.

After nearly three years
And to millions of cheers,
David doodled the last little place.
Now did you know it at all
That the Great China Wall
Can be seen from way up in space?

This fact, most important,
Is something that oughtn't
Be overlooked, 'cos one day
An alien ship on a pleasure trip,
Sailed by from the great Milky Way.

When looking at Earth
They smiled with mirth
For they saw the colourful line
Two thousand miles long
With doodles on !....
They'd never seen something so fine.

They caused quite a panic
When they flew in and landed,
But explained, using pictures and signs,
That they'd just come to see
The she or the he
Who drew those magnificent lines
.

 

 

When first meeting David
He asked if they did
Drawings or art of some kind.
He learned that they drew
On the plains of Peru
But that was way back in time.

So having swapped stories
Of doodling glories
They made David an unbeatable offer.
He would cause a sensation in their constellation
If he'd doodle their Great Moons of Zoffa.

 

How could David refuse
He had nothing to lose.
The ultimate was to doodle the stars.
So he left right away,
Doodling his way
Past Saturn & Jupiter & Mars

Now it was quiet there on Earth,
David's planet of birth.
He was truly the greatest they'd seen.
They talked of it all,
Reminiscing the Wall
And the day he doodled for the queen.

 



But though David's gone
To the stars and he's on
A spaceship somewhere up high,




Take a telescope one night,
Pick a
star shining bright,
Focus in, and if you espy
All kinds of lines
And funny designs
And among them you catch sight of a noodle
,
I'll bet you my hat
That you're looking at
The work of the great David Oodle.

THE END

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