COCKY: THE OPERA (4)
By:
June 11, 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.) | & more to come.
ACT ONE
Scene Three (contd.)
Scene: Champion’s garden. Tousled grass, bare patches, a wooden fence across the rear of the stage.
Champion is in his hutch, noshing noisily on a bag of Quavers. Cocky is sitting on the hutch roof, in an attitude that combines indolence and defiance. Weasel Paul is fretfully talking.
WEASEL PAUL: You know what I’m going to say. This has to stop.
COCKY: What has to stop?
WEASEL PAUL: This! This whole setup you have here. Lounging about half-pissed. Avoiding your responsibilities. This hutch business.
COCKY (makes deprecating gesture): Pish.
WEASEL PAUL: It’s getting dangerous.
COCKY: Ah Weez. I love you like a brother, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. We’re minding our own business, me and the Champ. We stay out of it. We keep our noses clean.
CHAMPION (happy with his Quavers): KEEP OUR NOSES CLEAN YEAH
WEASEL PAUL: Listen to me. You were Holiday Harry’s favourite. You were his prince, his special one, his heir apparent. Everybody knew it.
Cocky grunts.
And now Harry’s gone, and Billy’s taking over the Borough, and foxes are wondering if you’re going to make a move. Which means that Billy’s wondering about that too. Which means that he’s going to make a move.
COCKY: What kind of move?
WEASEL PAUL: A move, Cocky. A proper move.
COCKY: Nah.
Weasel Paul gives Cocky a look.
Scrag me?
WEASEL PAUL: Yup.
COCKY: Billy?
WEASEL PAUL: Yup.
COCKY: Never. That fox loves me.
WEASEL PAUL: No he doesn’t.
CHAMPION: THANKS FOR THE QUAVERS WEASEL PAUL THEY’RE DELICIOUS
COCKY (starting to fume): Oh this is such bollocks. Such a load of fucking cobblers.
WEASEL PAUL: You know I’m right. That’s why you’re getting upset.
COCKY: Do you know how much fighting I have to do, right here in this garden? Do you have ANY IDEA?
WEASEL PAUL: Here we go. Here we go with the self-pity.
COCKY: These young foxes, these horrible little pubes… They want to make a name for themselves by fighting Cocky, so they come in here all pumped up and nasty and I have to see them off. One by bleeding one. It’s exhausting!
WEASEL PAUL shakes his head.
COCKY: And I’ve got Nora running around out there, Nora my ex-vixen, slagging me off everywhere she goes. Slandering me, maligning me, undermining me. And now I’ve got you in my ear with all this local politics.
CHAMPION: THEY SHOULD LEAVE YOU ALONE COCKY
COCKY: See? HE gets it. You think you’re the great psychologist, but Champion gets it. Champion understands.
WEASEL PAUL (to audience): Truly, I didn’t know he was this far gone.
COCKY: Because you see Weez, the thing about me is…
Music swells.
WEASEL PAUL (realizing what is about to happen): Oh no.
Cocky vaults onto the roof of the hutch and starts to sing.
I’m a gentle fox,
not a mental fox —
almost an incidental fox.
My step is light,
my scent is evanescent.
My needs are few,
my mood demure.
The larger vices I abjure.
In company, unfailingly,
I’m pleasant.
And my sole desire,
on a May morning,
is to sit with my friend
and do not a thing
but watch Mother Nature’s
mammaries swing,
and gently drink, and gently sing,
and gently smell the smells of spring
and gently pull on my ding-a-ling
CHAMPION: AND GENTLY PULL ON MY DING-A-LING
WEASEL PAUL (to audience): Oh this is atrocious.
COCKY (turning dark): But here they come,
here they bloody well come,
stinking up my bailiwick
with fumes of realpolitik,
wanting what I won’t give to them —
upsetting my equilibrium !
WEASEL PAUL (indignant): Really, Cocky!
COCKY: O why can’t they leave me to my
own devices,
my Listerine, my private scene,
my naughty-but-nices,
why must they insist upon these sacrifices,
why can’t they just leave me alone?
He tosses an empty Listerine bottle over the fence. It lands noisily on the far side.
I’m a gentle fox,
not a mental fox,
really a transcendental fox,
my contemplations floating ever higher.
I’d rather not fight
Don’t scratch me, don’t bite!
For aggro I have no appetite.
When faced with it I modestly retire.
CHAMPION: LOOK OUT COCKY
A seedy young fox wriggles under the wooden fence and moves loosely and dangerously up the garden towards Cocky and Champion. Weasel Paul takes a step back. Champion starts to gibber with fear.
COCKY: But here they come,
here they bloody well come
with more testosterone than sense
sticking their noses under my fence.
Rucks without number Cocky has won,
so they come to his garden to try it on.
Cocky somersaults off the hutch roof and lands on the interloper. A brief frenzy of snarling and scrabbling ensues, concluding with an injured yelp from the younger fox, who then scampers hectically back to the hole under the fence and slithers out of the garden.
CHAMPION: YAY
COCKY: O why can’t they leave me to my
own devices,
my Listerine, my private scene,
my naughty-but-nices,
why must they insist upon these sacrifices,
why can’t they just leave me alone?
Cocky hops back onto the hutch roof, now brandishing a bottle of Listerine.
WHY can’t they see that enough’s enough?
WHY must I be bothered with all this stuff?
WHY can’t they all just fuck right off?
Oh WHY can’t they just leave me alone?
Alone with my spasms!
CHAMPION: YOUR ENTHUSIASMS
COCKY: My luxury naps!
CHAMPION: AND YOUR TEN-MINUTE
CRAPS
COCKY: Why can’t they just leave me alone?
The dogs, they’re dogging. The cats, they’re
catting.
The weasels wheeze —
CHAMPION: AND THE RATS ARE RATTING
COCKY: And I’m just a fox who has taken
his knocks
so why can’t they all leave me
(Cocky and Champion together, the latter’s note especially toneless)
A-LOOOOOOONE?
CHAMPION: THEY SHOULD COCKY
COCKY: I know they should.
End scene.
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.