Tim Armour poem: Otto Biography

I call him “Little Big Mouth” for he’s not the size of tuppence,
Yet he’ll tackle Turks of Titans giving either their comeuppance.
This behaviour’s apt to manifest when “Mouth” is feeling frisky,
Such as afternoons or evenings when he’s well into his whisky.
He’s a contradicted creature at the same time glib and gloomy;
Hail fellow well met face belies a jaundiced eye so rheumy.
He is oh so virtuoso on an organ or piano,
Yet at piecing things together, well, let’s say he’s no Meccano.
If he gets you in his grasp, he’s apt to talk your weary ear off,
So much so that folks who spot him on the street are apt to veer off.
He’s a piker. He’s a pendant, parsimonious and pompous,
Who would hob nob with the snobs and those of value catawampus.
He’ll lay victim on the altar of these greedy people’s grasping,
As he aches for affirmation like a fish on shore a gasping.
He can craft a crop of phrases into lyrics deep with meanings,
Yet this talent’s tarred and tainted by his trite and venal learnings.
In a horde he’s only happy if he’s centre of attention.
This necessity has made of him a mother of invention,
For he has a million stories, one for every situation,
And they change each time he tells them; custom made confabulation.
His magnetic personality might draw my fist to strike him,
And I’d do so in a second if, at times, I wasn’t like him.

“O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us. To see oursels as ithers see us!”
From Robbie Burns’ To a Louse