Weedah wanted to play a trick
On the hateful men
Who lived on the banks of the river
In the southern most part
Of the land
He built twenty shacks
And in front of each shack
He put a little mailbox
To make it look as though
People were living there
Whenever one of the hateful men
Would pass by the houses
On the way to one of their hateful meetings
Where they gathered together
To talk about who they hated
The Weedah would fly from one back door
To the next
And call out in different voices
That of an old man
Or a baby crying
Or any of the voices
The Weedah was talented enough
To imitate
He made sure
That whenever a man
Was passing by the house
He made sure
That whatever he was shouting
Was hateful and mean
And cruel
Because hateful and cruel people
Love hearing other people
Say hateful and cruel things
The hateful men
Would hear the horrible things
The Weedah was saying
And they would come
To the front
Of one of the shacks
And knock on the door
And ask if they could come in
And share hateful stories
About whoever lived there
And the Weedah would call out ‘Yes!’
In one of its many voices
Then the hateful man
Would enter the shack
And the Weedah would cast a spell on them
Turning them into a little mouse
And the Weedah would chase the mouse
Out of the shack
And into the nearby forest
Where it would never be seen again
Because whereas real mice
Are resourceful and can live for a long time
In the forest
Hateful men turned into mice
Do not last very long at all
The hateful men
Began to disappear
One by one
And soon tales were told
About what happens
To hateful men
That they go missing
And are never found
Their sons and daughters
Grew up
Hearing tales
Of the twenty shacks
On the edge of town
And how that was the last place
Any of their hateful fathers were seen
And their mothers warned them
Never to go near the houses
But when a brave or foolish child would
They would find the shacks abandoned
Except for the sound of voices
That never seemed to belong
To anyone
