My mom warned me
About the ****** man.
I feared he would come
And find out who I am
And stick his fingers
Right up my own nose
But daddy quickly told me
That’s not the way it goes.

He said your mama has
A kind of impediment
That makes her talk funny
Not say what she meant.
And we were all accustomed
To words mom got wrong.
We seldom made a comment
We’d just nod and go along.

So, I grew up with stories
Of a guy called the Boogerman.
That was the way of childhood
In the neighborhood where I ran.
He was scary and if you failed
To watch out very carefully
He’d sneak up in the night
And grab you quite suddenly.

Some said he would eat you
Like the wolf in fairy stories.
All of the tales were scary
And none of them were glories.
But I never saw or met anyone
Who seemed to fit the description
Until I was grown, recently, and
That was the obvious definition.

He seems to hate everybody
And lives up high behind guards.
He growls and spits and shouts
And uses ugly nasty words.
Boogerman is the only thing
That fits the creep he seems;
The kind of creature found
In ‘wake up screaming’ dreams.

I’m sure when he bakes and eats
The people too dumb to run away
He gobbles and gulps and slobbers
In the most disgusting of ways.
And though some just nod and say
Well, that’s how stuff with him goes,
I am sure that he does it all the while
With his finger up his nose.