A sad tale written to illustrate the fact that, if challenged to a duel by a duvet, you should graciously retire from the contest

This is a tale, a tragic tale, of buses and of duvets

You will not hear its like in any plays or books or movie ... movays
It is the tale of what occurred when I decided I
Would take my duvet on the bus, not Catcher in the Rye.

A book, you see, is more the thing to take when on the bus.
But duvets need a wash sometimes.  (They're full of bits of us -
A million trillion skin cells that slough off in the night -
And form a tasty supper for a zillion dustmite.) 

A duvet looks unthreatening when laid out on the bed.
It's just something to warm you as you rest your weary head.
I thought the same, dear friends, that duvets were not filled with spite,

But mine’s a Big Mike Tyson duvet, spoiling for a fight.

Be warned, be warned.  A duvet, faced with being rolled and shoved
Into a plastic bag thinks it a sign it is not loved.
It's like a screaming toddler who will not in buggy sit
And stiffens up his legs until the mum admits defea - defit.

After the half an hour it took to get it tied up snug

I took my Ventolin and swigged some gin from a half-pint mug

Then dragged the duvet out so we could catch a bus to town.
One came and I thought, ‘Lovely.  Just on time.  I can sit down.’

Hah!   Let's go back to what I said of Catcher in the Rye
And look at all the differences 'tween books and duvii [the plural, I swear]               
A book is well-behaved.  It sits quite passively in laps.
A duvet wants its own seat and then some of yours, perhaps.

A duvet, off the bus, looks like a duvet, and won't faze ya.
When on the bus, it grows - becomes the size of Africa … and Australasia.
It rings the bell by accident.  It trips folk in the aisle.
It waits until its moment and then leaps out at a child.

My duvet strained against its bag.  I thought that it would split.
It terrified me, thinking what might happen next.  Would it
Rise up and come alive - become a kind of Duvet Shrek?
Change from its white/grey-white to Green?  Grab babies by the neck?

Would it stand on a seat and holler, 'BOW DOWN TO KING DUVET?'
Or burst into a jazz song like a groovay duvet Buble?
Or drag the driver from his seat, squeeze out his final breath
Then drive us all to Duvet-Land where we would meet our death?

I dragged my duvet off the bus, making apologies
For bashing everybody's elbows, legs and heads and knees.
I headed for the launderette, for my revenge was near.
Hah!  On the bus, the duvet won.  But I would triumph here.

Oh, with what pleasure did I watch that Thing  go round and round,
As, trapped in the machine, it could do NOTHING as it drowned.
And then, when it was washed and clean, I tortured it with heat
Inside the tumble drier.  Oh, the victory was sweet!

I had two hours of quiet while my duvet washed and dried.

And then I opened the machine. And then I realised.

Pre-wash, it had been big enough to cause me lots of trouble

But post-wash and post-dry it had fluffed up to more than double

My duvet sat there all puffed out and proud and pleased and smug

There was no way I’d get it back into that plastic bug/bag

What’s more, I had no transport other than the G1 bus

It was a busy time of day – would there be room for us?

  

Please don’t ask me to share with you the details of that journey

Except that all the passengers, they thought it very furney

That when at first we boarded, they saw only giant bedding

And that once we two were on the bus, no, no  one else could geddin

I’m thinking now that sheets, and blankets, like my Grenny hed

Look ‘specially attrective on my nice big double bed

The duvet’s going to Oxfam, but I feel no pang of guilt

It was the devil incarnate, masquerading as a quilt.

PS  If you liked this poem, you might like to see other poems here