Friday, March 04, 2005

Mr. Fox and Rabbit - Part 4

“Oy! Seeming is believing.” Perfectly Frank covered his mouth with both hands and made small whimpering sounds begging for forgiveness.
Rabbit slowly walked over to Toad and patted his knee, exactly one pat every two seconds. A rhythmic twitch seemed to have taken temporary residency in his left eyelid. “So… so. Do tell me what you do, Toad.”
“I am …I am a POET!”
“Ain’t that a corker.” Somewhere under the rainbow lay a bottle of vodka. Rabbit suckled on it.
“Rabbit loves poetry.” Dr. Bear shoved Perfectly Frank. “More!” He pointed at the sad, spent roach in between his primary and his secondary claw with his tongue.
“Oh all right.” Perfectly Frank rolled another joint.
“You didn’t say Oy.” Mr. Fox sounded reproachful. “You have to remain consistent, Perfectly.”
“Oy.” He passed the joint to Dr. Bear.
“That’s better.”
“So what kind of a poetry do you write?” Through the cloud of vodka vapors wafting from his lips, Rabbit sounded interested.
“LOVE poetry, of course.”
Dr. Bear cleared his throat.
“What is it, Dr. Bear?”
Dr. Bear stared fixedly at someone OUTSIDE of this plane of existence. His voice was unhappy, accusatory. “You said you would not put your poetry on this blog.”
Rabbit grinned. “Wow. That is some really wicked catnip, Toad. Dr. Bear thinks he is part of a piece of metafiction.”
“What if he is?” Mr. Fox placed his lips around the burning end of Dr. Bear’s joint and sucked on it. He seemed unaffected by the burn. For a frozen moment both of the smokers tried to force the smoke to go in their respective direction, until, finally, predictably, Dr. Bear’s greater lung capacity triumphed. He sucked and sucked and sucked. Mr. Fox’s red furry shape was sucked into the joint along with the smoke.
“Now there is something you don’t see every day.”
“Oy to that.”
“Read me some of your poetry.”
“I can’t. I can recite some, though.”
“You nitpicking maggot. Recite some of your poetry.”
Perfectly Frank cleared his throat. “Here we go…”

Wunst our hired girl, when she
Got the supper, an’ we all et,
An’ it was night, an’ Ma an’ me
An’ Pa went wher’ the “Social” met –
An’ nen when we come home, an’ see
A light in the kitchen-door, an’ we
Heerd a maccordeun, Pa says “Lan’-
O’-Gracious! Who can her beau be?
An’ I marched in, an’ ‘Lizabuth Ann
Wuz parchin’ corn fer the Raggedy Man!
Better say
“Clear out o’ the way!
They’s time for work, an’ time fer play!
Take the hint, an’ run, Child; run!
Er we cain’t git no courtin’ done!”

“Oh my God.”
“Oy! It’s wickedly good, isn’t it?”
“Oh my God.”
Dr. Bear looked around nervously. Rabbit’s prayers tended to get results. This was directly attributable to Rabbit’s stance on God. God helps those who help themselves, so, Rabbit was frequently assisted by God. Presumably, God has not yet assisted the small shrew – for a moment Dr. Bear lost his train of thought, since he started to think about whether rabbits were shrews – since he had not yet asked for anything. He simply addressed God.
“If it is good.” Rabbit spoke in clipped, curt tones. “I am not meant to live.”
Perfectly Frank did not look happy. “What was wrong with it?”
“Where do you want me to start? First of all, what the hell is a ‘maccordeun’? Why is your character talking like a retarded child? How dare you take the E away from Elizabeth to force a rhyme couplet? How dare you?” A fat tear fell from Rabbit’s gigantic red eyes.
“Maccordeun… uhm… yes…. Well, the thing about that….”
“You don’t know, do you?”
“Well, it isn’t that I don’t know…”
“You did not write this …poem, did you?”
“Well, I wrote it under a pseudonym.”
“I… see. Would this pseudonym have been, say… James Whitcomb Riley?”
Toad smiled the broad smile of the truly stupid. “Why yes! You have heard of my work?”
“Yes. I have. Alas. Heard. Your… ‘Work’. You LIVED in the late 1800s.”
“Exactly! It’s wonderful that you like my work.”
“This reminds me of a scene from The Scorpion King.” Said Mr. Fox.

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