COCKY: THE OPERA (6)
By:
August 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 Four (contd.)
Scene: Darkness. Rain. The canal towpath again.
HOLIDAY HARRY, Borough boss, is mooching along in obvious low spirits.
He is extremely alone, vibratingly solitary — and yet seems to feel himself under some kind of remote surveillance. He twitches, and from time to time he’ll squint upwards, as if trying to make something out in the night sky.
Above him, out of range, the raven brothers RANDALL and CORVIN DuNOIR are circulating in the gloom. Slow sinister spirals, their eyes upon the fox.
HOLIDAY HARRY: Think I don’t know you’re up there? I know you’re up there, you graverobbers. I’ve been feeling you all week.
He sighs.
It’s got to be them, right? Got to be the ravens. Otherwise why would I feel like this?
Suffused with melancholy and confiding in the audience, he sings.
I’ve been feeling a feeling
that’s hard to define.
It’s a slithery sensation
up and down my spine.
It’s a burble, it’s a bubble,
it’s a bulge in my brain.
This feeling I’m feeling
is hard to explain.
CORVIN (gloating): When you’re under a
raven’s eye
what can you do but die?
RANDALL: Bootless to scream
when you’re caught
in our beam,
bootless to fidget or fret.
Too late to moan
or attempt to postpone
and a long way too late
for regret.
HOLIDAY HARRY: I’ve been feeling a feeling
that’s hard to express.
My reality principle’s
under duress.
Was it something I said?
Something I ate?
This feeling I’m feeling
is hard to relate.
CORVIN: Better say goodbye to your friends
when you’re under a raven’s lens.
HOLIDAY HARRY: I’ve been feeling a feeling
that’s hard to convey.
I had a proud organ —
it shrivelled away!
And gone are the vixens
who gave me the vibe.
This feeling I’m feeling’s
so hard to describe.
RANDALL: You’ll experience a loss
of the sexual urge —
then a fear
that some other urge
will emerge.
And then we can add
to this lengthening list
the gravest of doubts
that you even exist.
CORVIN: But you do,
but you do,
but you do.
Sad but true!
HOLIDAY HARRY: Do I though?
RANDALL: Stoicism? We don’t
recommend it.
Best to sink to the bottom and end it.
The peace, the release, the blessed
surcease…
RANDALL and CORVIN (together):
Cease to exist,
cease to exist.
Living’s for losers.
Cessation is bliss!
Cease to exist,
cease to exist,
you know you won’t really be missed.
HOLIDAY HARRY: How long will I feel this
feeling?
Does this feeling have a ceiling?
When you get to the top
do you stop?
Or is there more?
Does this feeling have a floor?
The ravens bend themselves fractionally earthward, drifting into a lower spiral, and HOLIDAY HARRY looks up sharply.
CORVIN: He’s onto us.
RANDALL: Expand until the centre
disappears.
Accelerate! The final vision nears.
CORVIN: There may be a slight ringing in
your ears.
RANDALL: Eternity is fabulously dull.
The stars are fixed. The frequency is null.
CORVIN: You’ll love it!
RANDALL and CORVIN (together):
Cease to exist,
cease to exist.
Why settle for that
when you can have this?
Cease to exist,
cease to exist,
you know you won’t really be missed.
HOLIDAY HARRY: You lurkers, you stalkers,
you flickering things,
I can your hear your beaks creak
and the whine of your wings.
Is my fate now the sport
of malevolent birds?
This feeling I’m feeling
is quite beyond words.
I’ve been feeling a feeling
that’s hard to define.
It’s a slithery sensation
up and down my spine.
It’s a burble, it’s a bubble,
it’s a bulge in my brain.
This feeling I’m feeling’s
so hard to explain.
RANDALL (exultant): This the end,
foxiferous friend!
Like divebombing dragons we descend.
CORVIN: With talons cocked!
RANDALL: And beaks like skewers!
RANDALL and CORVIN (together): Not
recommended for younger viewers.
Blackout. We can see nothing. We must use our ears.
A sheer downward arc of siren-like noise ends in a fox’s ragged cry.
There are confused splashings and flailings as of a body entering the water, and then a huge decelerating pulse – GOOSH!… GOOSH!…
Which could be raven’s wings flogging the air, or a heart beating its last, or both.
Lights up.
The ravens have alighted on the towpath. They move jerkily, dissociatedly.
Holiday Harry’s body floats in the canal, an abject lump of wet fur.
CORVIN: And that, ladies and gentlemen, is that.
Curtain.
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.