poem from "Shards": Maudie Cobwebs

"Your children too good to play with my boy?
Best believe I'll remember this slight!"
Said Maudie to her stuffy neighbor one day
And she forced a laugh when that woman's son died.
"He got a fever and it serves her right
I won't be bakin' no sympathy pies for her type."

"The world done me wrong, so bad and so long,
I'm gonna do it one worse!"
So when Maudie inherited a Funeral Home,
she lived there and she drove her own hearse.
She was a poor pregnant waif 'til a family will gave her wealth
But she kept her curtains drawn and her new gowns to herself.
Poor Maudie Cobwebs.
She never goes out.

"The world don't want my little son,
He came out of wedlock, you see.
So he's gonna stay right by my side and safe."
'til one day in the mirror, only half-shocked
the boy saw he'd grown horns, tail and a furry frock.

Maudie sang:
"The world done us wrong, so bad and so long,
I'm gonna do it one worse.
I'm gonna make a house of this funeral home
and I'm drive around in a hearse.
I don't want no smilin' visitors.
They'd just scream when they see my son
I don't want no charity to give or receive ,
because when I was poor there was none."
Poor Maudie Cobwebs
She had not a friend.

Hardship, they say, hardens most shells,
but it can widen the hearts and minds of the toughest lot.
But for Maudie, they say, it softened her skin,
hardened the heart and it made her brain rot.

Poor Maudie, livin' like a corpse.
Poor Maudie. What could be worse.

"The world done me so wrong, so bad and long.
I'm gonna do it one worse,
Don't need no love, don't want no friends
I've already got son, home, and a hearse."
Her boy done changed to a demon
Her house a southern tourist joke.
If you see her phantom, don't make a meeting.
Maudie is an unpleasant ghost.
But that's just Maudie Cobwebs' way.
She was a bitch, long before she decayed.