Once there was a boy hungry for sweets;

thought he’d get some candy and trick-or-treat.

Set off with his plastic pumpkin in hand

with a route thought out, all plotted and planned.

But it wasn’t yet then Halloween night,

and there wasn’t another kid in sight.

He knocked on the first house’s door,

dressed up with tusks to look like a boar.

‘Little pig,’ the bent but kind old man said,

‘Come, the candy is all out in the shed.’

So the boy agreed, eager for sweets;

Followed the man far from the streets.

‘You’ll come back later, too, for the feast?

Your folks are coming, there’s room for a beast. ‘

The boy grunted like a boar to say ‘yes’—

This man threw the best feasts for all of his guests.

In the shed the boy saw only plums,

and suddenly he felt so very dumb.

Looking this way and that, not a treat was spied.

Plums were not candy—the man had lied.

He saw he was trapped as he tried to leave

for the man pulled a knife out of his sleeve.

The boy dropped his plastic pumpkin pail.

He opened his mouth, wanting to wail.

The knife went up, the lights went out,

the  boy dropped dead before he could shout.

How’d the idea of sweets get in his head?

You can’t eat candy when you are dead!

The youthful boar was stuffed with fruit

on a platter he was served as a brute.

His parents shared a slice of belly,

slathered  with a scoop of plum jelly.

‘Have you seen our son this evening?’

The boy’s parents asked, their lips bleeding—

With jelly, with jelly, and a bit of child.

‘Probably stuffed already,’ the man said and smiled.