COCKY: THE OPERA (7)
By:
October 18, 2025
An excerpt from a musical in progress, which takes as its source material the author’s swearing-animal epic The Ballad of Cocky the Fox, serialized here at HILOBROW from 2010–11; it was published in book form in 2011. Opera installments illustrated by Kristin Parker.
COCKY: THE OPERA: PRELUDE & ACT ONE, SCENE ONE | ACT ONE, SCENE TWO | ACT ONE, SCENE THREE | ACT ONE, SCENE THREE (contd.) | ACT ONE, SCENE FOUR | ACT ONE, SCENE FOUR (cont.) | ACT TWO, SCENE ONE | & more to come.
ACT TWO
Scene One
Scene: a leafless spinney, an English classic, a tangled void of briars and nettles and nasty little inward-looking trees. Dotted about at various heights are the white forms of hardened plastic bags — used glue-bags.
The light hangs coldly in this place. In its centre lies an empty refrigerator on its side. Sitting on top is an aged vixen. She is long in the tooth and stiff in the joint, with chewed discoloured fur, but she exudes nonetheless a certain Maggie Smith-like hauteur and charm. This is Patsy — Aunt Patsy — and this is her wood: Patsy’s Wood, or the Free Zone of Patsonia.
At the scene’s edge, crouched behind a hawthorn bush and looking on wide-eyed, are Cocky and Champion. As they watch the old vixen, they talk in low voices.
PATSY (muttering at first, then louder): Less me, more Death. Less me, more Death.
She gets to her feet, standing on the fridge.
I must be emptied utterly. Seven years of isolation to see it.
CHAMPION: Who is this Cocky?
COCKY: This is my Aunt Patsy. What an old baggage, bloody hell.
PATSY: Absorption. Annihilation. The only possible fulfilment.
COCKY: Harry used to say she could have run the Borough if she’d wanted to. Hard to believe, eh?
CHAMPION: …
COCKY: Foxes keep away from her now. Only the glue-sniffers come here.
CHAMPION: How old is she Cocky?
COCKY: Nobody knows.
CHAMPION: Is she really your aunt Cocky?
COCKY: She’s everybody’s aunt.
CHAMPION: Is she mental?
COCKY: She’s wise. And she’s mental.
CHAMPION: Are we scared of her Cocky?
COCKY: Potentially. Potentially.
Patsy begins to sing. The verses of her song are slow and soupy with melancholy self-awareness, the chorus is pumped-up, brassy and defiant — almost manic. The transitions between these moods are comically abrupt.
PATSY: ~ Adagio ~
These bones are sore
from fights galore.
Concluded are my rambles.
No home for an old vixen
so I flop between these brambles.
Sex has left my body.
It made a hissing sound.
And parts of me
that once were pert
now scrape along the ground.
BUT…
[Chorus]
~ Vivace ~
I’ve still got it,
I’ve still got it,
I possess it
in improbable amounts!
I’ve still got it
though it might be hard to spot it.
You’re besotted, cause I’ve got it
where it counts.
~ Adagio ~
The foxes used to follow me.
They’d fixate on my rear!
But now I’m in the creepy copse
and never a fox comes near.
Shall I whine? I shan’t.
I’m an agony aunt.
I’m an aunt in agony.
No pain upon this rainy earth
is alien to me.
AND BESIDES…
[Chorus]
[Bridge]
~ Andante ~
Come in, come in, to this wood bare and
rude
and share the ether of my solitude.
Come in, for they have ringed my house
with fear —
but if you’ve got the bollocks, Patsy’s here.
BECAUSE…
~ Vivace ~
I’ve still got it.
I’ve still got it.
I possess it
in improbable amounts!
I’ve still got it,
though it might be hard to spot it.
You’re besotted, cause I’ve got it,
and I’ll chew through your carotid
if you think that I ain’t got it
where it COOOOOOOUNTS!
She steps off the fridge and peers about.
My nose isn’t completely gone, Cocky the fox. I can smell your bullshit a mile away. Who do you have with you, that’s the question. (She sniffs) Innocence… (Sniffs again) And forgotten turnips. No! (Sniffs again) Mouldy hutch-straw.
COCKY (to Champion): We’ve been rumbled.
To be continued…
MORE PARKER at HILOBROW: COCKY THE FOX: a brilliant swearing-animal epic, serialized here at HILOBROW from 2010–2011, inc. a newsletter by Patrick Cates | THE KALEVALA — a Finnish epic, bastardized | THE BOURNE VARIATIONS: A series of poems about the Jason Bourne movies | ANGUSONICS: James and Tommy Valicenti parse Angus Young’s solos | MOULDIANA: James and Tommy Valicenti parse Bob Mould’s solos | BOLANOMICS: James traces Marc Bolan’s musical and philosophical development | WINDS OF MAGIC: A curated series reprinting James’s early- and mid-2000s writing for the Boston Globe and Boston Phoenix | CROM YOUR ENTHUSIASM: J.R.R. Tolkien’s THE HOBBIT | EVEN MORE PARKER, including doggerel; HiLo Hero items on Sid Vicious, Dez Cadena, Mervyn Peake, others; and more.