Snakes! - the poem

I first wrote this poem as a post to a thread about humorous invented words and definitions, as a reply to someone who had written a much shorter poem about snakes. Her poem was a general response to posts about snakes, and had a line that could be taken as referencing an earlier post of mine involving Medusa, the mythical figure who had snakes on her head instead of hair. The general point of her poem, given in a humorous way, was that she did not like snakes, though she did not say the word anywhere, always saying "them" instead. At the time the thread was sometimes being used by people to post humorous take-offs on the "Snakes on a Plane" movie, so quite a few posts had snakes in them, though some had versions not involving snakes.

I later changed my poem slightly, in a version not part of that thread, making it have less of a specific response, making it a more general poem about someone not liking snakes. It fits in rather well in my family this way, as my father was chased by a snake long ago and my mother, when she was young, sometimes had the experience of a particular worker on the family farm showing her snakes he had killed while mowing the yard.

In the poem below, the line "Many other places where" originally said "Places have been listed where" in the version in the humor thread, and the line "Places I have not yet given" originally said "But other places were not given".

This final version of the poem is dated 12:11 PM, December 10, 2007. The version in the humor thread was dated 8:55 AM, May 24, 2007, and the Medusa post was dated 7:40 AM, May 23, 2007. All times are Arizona Mountain Standard Time (MST).


The Medusa post:

Snakes on a Brain

What happened when Medusa's "hair" became ingrown.


The final version of the poem:

SNAKES!

Should a snake always be inside its lair,
And not catch a person unaware?

Are there other places they can be,
Where you cannot, will not, see?

Many other places where,
You would not like to find them there?

Places I have not yet given,
Places where they could be livin'?

If one crawled swiftly up the lane,
Would it drive you quite insane?

If they came from out your pockets,
Would your eyes bulge from their sockets?

If one fell from trees into your hair,
Would it give you such a scare?

Would one in the sunshade in your car,
Really give you such a jar?

Would one found upon a pillow,
Make you let out quite a bellow?

So many places snakes might lurk,
Would they all drive you berserk?

Is there a place that I could say,
That would not make you run away?

Or would a snake found anywhere,
Be one more snake than you could bear?