Eric The Genius

 

Eric was a little boy

But one with big ideas

He’d invented cars for cats

And antennae for your ears

 

Which, if you got the tuning right

And sussed out the location

On the dial, you could eavesdrop on

The International Space Station

 

He’d hacked into the Pentagon

He did it all the time

He’d hacked into his library

To wipe out his library fines

 

He’d invented ice cream

That was hot instead of cold

And fruit that would go rotten

And produce delicious mould

 

He’d invented BBQ’s

You could use in the rain

And a printer that you could connect

Directly to your brain

 

But all of this was easy

And just what you’d expect

From a boy called Eric The Genius

With a sky-high intellect

 

So when the Mayor came calling

With his cap in hand

Saying, ‘Eric, Eric help us

With your genius plans.

 

The city has a problem

One only you can solve

All the drains are clogged up

Do you think you can resolve

 

This tiny little issue,                                                                                           

This inner city worry?

We’ll pay you lots and lots

Twice as lots if you hurry.’

 

Twice as lots was lots indeed

So Eric got to thinking

With clogged drains water rises

Soon the city would be sinking

 

Perhaps a giant hoover

Would get the blockage moving

But the hoover must be really big

To get the right amount of hoovering

 

Or perhaps he could deploy

A mechanical dung beetle

Which could push away the blockage

(faecal or non-faecal)

 

But the minor plans were not so grand

And so all that could be done

Thought Eric, ‘I must harness-

THE POWER OF THE SUN!’

 

A tricky task indeed

For those whose brains are teenious

But a fairly routine job

If you are a genius

 

And so in one afternoon

Eric had the apparatus

He’d made it out of paper clips,

Chewing gum and calculators

 

Town-wide the residents had gathered

For the flicking of the switch

And with Eric at the helm

They were sure there’d be no hitch

 

No hiccup, wrinkle or concern

No impediment to the plan

If a problem needed fixing

Then Eric was your man

 

Which is a thought that Eric thunk

And thunk more time than not

Genius is as genius does

And Eric had done a lot

 

 

 

He had made the paper which

Emitted its own light

So that you could draw or read

Late into the night

 

He’d made healthy coca cola

That wouldn’t lose its fizz

and GPS for pairs of socks

so none would go amiss

 

So of course when he stood there

On the podium

A ten-year-old deployed to grasp

The power of the sun

 

He was feeling pretty good

In fact he felt terrific

Never could he imagine that

Things might go apocalyptic

 

Which is why when he pulled the switch

He was quite surprised

That instead of watching water drain

He was watching water rise

 

It blurbed and bobbled out the drains

And smelt like week old socks

It bled into the canals

And over-flowed their locks

 

It rolled and crashed throughout the town

Destroying shops and houses

And continued to the fields

Knocking over cows and mices

 

Eric watched in horror

As the water made its way

Out of his town, into the world

And he couldn’t make it stay

 

It hurried into London

All smelly brown and wet

And pretty soon it had took out

The entire internet

 

 

 

Soon that water, such a calming force

Which had supplied the bath

Where Eric could think up ideas

Had destroyed the world by half

 

The tsunami beginning in

a drain on Croysden Keyes

Had gone on to abolish

The entire Philippines

 

And after the Philippines,

Japan, South Korea

Australia and New Zealand

Mongolia then Siberia

 

So what did little Eric do

When he saw that he had doomed

The survivors of his great mistake

To forever be marooned

 

On a military safety vessel

(for that’s where the elite went)

To bob above a patch of land

Formerly known as Kent

 

Did he shout or pass the buck

Or did he run and hide?

No neither, to his credit

He just sat down and cried

 

All the adults gathered round

And were very understanding

Saying to take the power of

The sun must have been demanding

 

And even though he had destroyed

Croysden Keyes and all the rest

Of the world what really counts

Is that he tried his best

 

And despite the fact they’ll never live

In the civilized world again

They agreed it was quite an impressive feat

For a boy of only 10