There once was a raucous rooster

That let rip from dusk til dawn

Squawking and squeaking

Shattering the silence

Wailing at and waking everyone

Atop the riad’s roof

In its unsound-proofed coop

Lived the little s**t

Safe as houses

Out of reach

Where the likes of us couldn’t get at it

On the hour

Every hour

It’s creaky cries could be heard

Sharp enough

To shatter glass

This was no sweet song bird

So out of tune

It serenaded the moon

It’s croaky chords sending shockwaves into space

I’ll never know

How us occupants below

Got any shut eye with that cock

on our case

Oh how we fantasised

Oh how we dreamed

Of wringing it’s neck

And rendering it tagine

If only to get

A bit of peace

Instead of tossing and turning

And counting bloody sheep

And it’s feathers could have been dyed

And arranged into a sphere

A Juju Hat to be wall-mounted

Like the prized head of a deer

That we had hunted and felled

In an insomnia-induced frenzy

By commandeering an earth to air missile

For a few thousand dirham and twenty

And launching it at

That f***ing coop

Where the raucous rooster reigned supreme

Atop the riad’s roof in Essauria

A fishing port

On the edge of the Medine.