Claude The Depressed Balloon
(Learns How To Be Uptimistic)

There was a balloon called Claude,
who was more than bored.
Bored...
and all the rest:
poor Claude was depressed   

His mood was brittle-bleak,
he sighed with a little leak.
He felt flawed and deflated,
feeling like that Claude hated.

But that feeling felt another flaw,
Claude hated himself some more.
Glum rubber glower declared
he was just a waste of air!

The other balloons at the party
lolloped on high quite smartly,
lording the party part
above paper plates of jam tarts.

Claude was seeping helium,
did not bob against the ceilium,
but bumped along the table top,
wouldn't give a poop if he popped.

At his knot the tarts were snapping,
and in a coil flopped his string.
Listlessly, he leaked
with a silent deadly squeak.

In cartwheeled a mean clown,
trifle concerned that Claude looked down.
Grin painted atop a grin,
from striped pockets produced a pin.

He was hired to make this birthday
a day of mirth and horseplay,
but a balloon who looked so flat
would get in the way of that.

So this clown by name of Bozo,
a boffin of heehees and hohos,
decided he should hasten
Claude's clinical deflation.
 
Bozo's fatal prick did near,
Claude complied sans cheer or fear,
for above him the thought did hang
'tis nobler to go out with a bang!

But Fate had another notion,
suddenly thru an open
window a wind of fate did blast,
well, let's say destiny's draught

took the matter into hands unseen,
blew off a wig of curly green,
wind-wibbled red jelly, pink blancmange,
and were a candle crown of orange

already lit crowning the birthday cake,
the wishes would have been the wind's to make!
Birthday cards fell as agrestal crows,
like reverse lightening Claude arose

he the puck when the hammer fell
in a strongman game that rang the bell.
The other balloons all shook like fruit
not ripe enough that tempest's toot

might dislodge into a muffled landing,
'Twas Claude, from sellotaped string moorings,
plucked by a gust of liberation!
He flurried like a panicked pigeon

who had accidentally flown indoors,
to a circuit of the ceiling soared.
Tethered balloons feigned snootiness, 
of Claude's elevation envious,

but their discomfort was not to last,
as with another lucky blast,
thru window wide at the far wall
Claude was carried by the squall!

From Bozo jabbing zinc alloy thorn,
from party where Claude flumped forlorn,
a little local turbulence
rescued our blue balloon by chance.

And now Claude was towed by the breeze
like beachball adrift upon open seas.
Not so much buffeted as buoyed,
his gaseous heart overjoyed.

An Icarus with a happy ending,
he gloried in ascending
th'azure, where silhouetted birds
also to winds of fate surrendered.

Back in the lounge the other balloons
would not behold the golden afternoon,
nor peer down at ochre rooftops
where Corrie cats groomed and licked their chops. 

Will Claude scale sky of his desires,
or latex go gooey at solar fire?
T'elsewhere isles will trade winds lead the way,
just in time for Man Friday's birthday?

Or will Man In The Moon give Claude
green cheese for breakfast and for board?
By tonight will he have gained such height,  
he shall shine purple amid starlight?

O whether Claude will rise or fall,
does not really matter at all,
for should he again feel so pfft and low,
he's learned up is the only way to go.