Based on Israel 2013
Life in an orphanage is less fun than it sounds
Dumped by one’s parents in a glorified dog pound
They feed us once a day a lukewarm bowl of slop
Made with hair clippings from the local barbershop
I need a home
My room’s so filthy a rat ate my toe
A crisp pack stuffed with a brick is my pillow
All night I’m kept awake by ghosts
Munchkin poltergeists lift my bed afloat
Please take me home
At my bat mitzvah the bats ate my scroll
The toilet’s teetering over a sinkhole
Last birthday I just got a box
And for Hanukkah eight new strains of pox
Some couples come here now and then to take my friends
There are some weeks where I’m the only foundling left
They say my sad-sack vibes are why I’ll never move
Whilst Pollyanna-types sell through the leaking roof
I need a home
My only toy was a stick till it broke
I had to share it with all the urchinfolk
My cane that time I had a stroke
I have never known hugs, just Sticky’s poke
Please take me home
My rags are horrid and torn, long passed on
More people died in my pants than at the Somme
At least in tears they’ve been well-washed
But their cloth makes me cough – it’s asbestos
“We’ll take the dumpy wailing whaleface over there”
Are words I dream I might still hear before I’m dead
I need to know
If there are shoes without newspaper soles
And taste milk not from the teats of roadkilled voles
I wash my face in a dog bowl
And spend all of my weekends mining coal
Please take me home
If I go on for too long still unsold
Someone might notice I’m 33 years old
So please take home this tragic tot
Or I’ll die in my nettle-fibre cot