This is the story of Ebenezer, the super cool cat who would be a rockstar. Its my first novel in verse, due to be illustrated and published as an ebook by Gold Orchid later this year, then as an audio-book with music and soundtrack by the magnificent Jake Madhatter Caswell. EBENEZER He came from the wrong side of town His house was the wrong way round He lived in the attic At the foot of the stairs Three flights underground He would fall to the ceiling He would climb to the floor He would go out for breakfast And bring it home, raw When his friends came to call He raced at a crawl To welcome them out As he bolted the door. Some thought him eccentric Some said he was cracked Some felt his behaviour Would soon get him sacked (if he actually had a job, that is) But others, with care and considerable tact Would remind them, and point To the obvious fact That dear Ebenezer Sheer Ebenezer Was after all Over all Perfectly sane For a cat In addition To prowess and perfect Primordial poise And to instincts as sharp as a blade He was known amongst those Who are known to know music from noise As the master of the bough As the star of the show A contender for the hit parade He could sing like an angel Turn sorrows to joy Or strum like the devil To sighs from the girls And tears from the boys. OUR POOR PROUD PUSS Unfortunately, however Our poor proud puss Our genius It seems ridiculous, iniquitous, A sorry tale to tell That our intrepid Ebenezer With talent so conspicuous With habits so meticulous Was penniless as well In short He was a cat without a hat As plain as that As poor as hell The cat that couldn’t afford a mat A cat so far from fat, if he sat, Flat, on the edge of a plank You’d see his flanks Were parallel He was a puss without boots A kitty, who’s kittie was spent A cat without a fiddle A beau, without a belle And when he came to think And think he often did Of all the things he didn’t have He made a list as long as leagues A list so long he’d scarce believe The places he could never see The times he never had The gorgeous violin, the mandolin The ukulele he so longed for But so lacked He worried over money for honey The price of mice The cost of this The scarcity of that It was during one such long dark night In dreams before the morning light He conceived a fantastical notion He saw in his mind the most magical find An instrument of devotion But now, for a change He began to arrange A wonderful transition He made the decision To follow the vision From hardly a prayer From only a promise To perfect provision For was he not The genie of the strings? The maker of musical magical things? Was he not The cat that could start With the ache of the heart With only the seeds Of his inspiration And build by his art From broken down parts A miracle of his own creation? THE CAT’S WHISKERS So now he began To work and to plan To gather together the means He raided the attic for anything static He tinkered and tore from the seams He took from the tip He stole from the skip He salvaged, and ravaged A once automatic washing machine He followed his focussed intention He delved through the shelves Till a quarter past twelve Till he found every piece And he worked without cease, Without sleep Through the days, through the nights Through the weeks To finish his invention And after a month and a day By the end of the 2nd of May His labour was almost complete But for one last component He imagined the moment That but for a touch and a twist and a tweak He could pick up his masterpiece Tested and tuned for a musical feast And play But oh for that one last thing The part that would make the bow sing He had tried every way But the final delay? His instrument had no strings Where could he get them What else could he try? When he just had to make What he couldn’t afford to buy He’d unravelled rope He’d twisted up twine But this only made An unmusical whine He looked in the mirror To ask himself why He’d heard about cat-gut He wanted to cry He looked at his face And into his eyes If only he knew He searched for a clue Oh what can I do How can I improvise? Then dear Ebenezer Oh dear, Ebenezer He looked at his whiskers His magnificent whiskers Surely he couldn’t No really he couldn’t, He wouldn’t! Not my magnificent whiskers The ultimate sacrifice So out came the scissors And he started to snip Holding them steady To avoid any slip And he snipped, and he stripped And he scissored them all And down did they fall His magnificent whiskers Lay clipped where they flipped Where they tipped to the floor So Ebenezer Grasped the tweezers He gripped and he gathered As he crouched on his knees He assembled his whiskers He stretched and he teased He threaded and plaited He pulled and released He adjusted the tension A tiny reduction, a pinch An extension Till the masterwork sung Till it rang on the strum He could hardly believe it It was done! It was done! THE TROUBLE WITH TROG It was days since he’d eaten Not even a mouse He ran down the stairs To escape from the house He carried his prize On the greatest of highs He was out in the open Under marvellous skies He took the road into the town He didn’t look right He didn’t look left He forgot to look up Or to look down This too, was unfortunate If only he’d looked to the left If only he’d checked For the terrible threat That lurked in the shadows And watched from the cleft Too late he looked up And too late he saw The hammering paws The slavering jaws The cavernous maw Of his enemy, Trog the Dog In meticulous detail And closer than ever before Trog the Dog towered above him He glowered, and growled and ground his teeth He narrowed his eyes at the cat he despised Trapped where he trembled beneath Goin somewhere? Ya manky ol mog? Said Trog the Dog.. Wot’s yur hurry? And wot you got there? Sumfink to share? Sum kinda chair? Gi yur, we’ll sit on it, shall we? Ebenezer realised He fully understood That soon he would be marmalised Without a doubt To doubt about And no way out He would But this, though quite enough to traumatise And no surprise it should Was nothing to the terror The unmitigated dread Of his seeing his creation crushed He wished for once his enemy Would sit on him, instead He flung himself over his treasure His probably final endeavour He clung to the case A fervent embrace He thought of the waste The disgrace The end of the race Well enough of it None of it! Never! So he turned and he sprang Like a battering ram And he dived and he span Like a boomerang And all the dog saw Was a flash and the floor Where Ebenezer wasn’t Anymore. But oh, not for long.. It was moments at most As he tore down the tarmac And shot past the post Ahead by a hair By the length of his predator’s nose Trog the Dog bounded And pounded And rounded And raced for the close With a hellcat in front By the gap of a ghost They howled round the corner They burst round the bend And Trog the Dog laughed The hellcat gasped! For ahead of them stark Was the mark Of a dark Dead end. THE PURPOSE OF WHISKERS So this was the end of the race This was the place he was lost without trace Without funeral favour or friend With eyes wide awake To his terrible fate And with not long to wait For the jaws of his doom to descend He ventured a glance For a chink of a chance For a hint, for a hope of escape And there! Did he dare Could he even pretend That Ebenezer Super squeezer Just perhaps Could zap Through the gap In the crack In the back Of the fence? In an instant The thought was an action In a blur beyond canine reaction He’d hid the contraption He’d leapt at the fraction Of freedom that called from the gate As he stretched every hair for nothing but air It seemed to be big enough, just the right shape! It was due to a painful contraction The sudden subtraction Of movement or traction Or limbs that would cooperate That now he recalled He remembered the cause Of this, his remarkably motionless state A word to the witless The purpose of whiskers Is to measure the gap The span of the cat So it doesn’t get trapped Like this one had It seemed, in order to demonstrate Trog the Dog stopped and he blinked In a long life he’s seen many things But brothers and sisters A cat without whiskers? And caught in the middle By the hey diddle diddle As he fought for his fiddle? Mad as a panther Daft as a chimp So Trog the Dog laughed like he hadn’t in years He could hardly look up for the tears So what should he do With the whisker-less fool Should he finish him off, Or buy him a drink? So he whistled and called To the wind, to the walls To the rabid and rag-tailed tenants Of the tenement block And before very long A slavering throng Had assembled to witness The end Of the cat they had gathered to mock There was Ezra Pound the Hound And Slab the Lab There was Molly the Collie And Wayne the Great Dane Who’d waited for Jayne Who’d gone to get Pog The Sausage Dog They had all come to gloat To share in the joke In the final note Of the cat that still hung Like a bung In a drum Without whiskers or wits Or one last hope EBENEZER’S ARMY If only they knew The terrible boob The blunder The calamitous mistake To assume for a second That the cat they had reckoned As dog-meat As lunch on a plate Could really be helpless Or friendless Defenceless Or easy to break When Trog the Dog called When he whistled and roared For the pack It was not just the hounds That were drawn to the sound But the din was discerned By a cat And a cat that had heard That had caught every word A cat that could never hang back For She-Cat Sheba Who loved Ebenezer Was poised and preparing The counter attack She raced down the alley To Sally O Malley Who’d spoken to Mad Max the Manx Who reported to Smog The Magnificent Mog Who’d woken up Tabby the Tank She passed it in person To Purdy the Persian Who ran to fetch Freda and Frank Samantha the Panther Roared like a tanker And raced to reach Bonny and Bob Just Bob, the monarch of the mob And no wonder Just a few words About Bob.. For Bob was so huge and so fast A super-cat, vast Ahead of his class He’d given up mice Who he trounced in a trice He could slice Through a bench He could grip like a vice He had teeth like a tiger Talons like glass He could leap over trucks And fly past cars He just didn’t bother with birds They were too slow for words He now preferred high speed trains Which he found it more fun To simply outrun And to wave at the passengers He powered to overtake Trog the Dog turned to his prey He swaggered And sneered But staggered And veered When he tripped As if something was blocking his way He cursed as he fell With a yell Bloomin Eck! But brightened up well when he saw What he held in his paw As he rose Unopposed From the floor He held up the case and he grinned Oh dear oh dear What have we here Little Tiddles? Well you know what we do And our point of view On felonious felines With fiddles HEY DIDDLE DIDDLE He attempted a smile Though not to beguile But to brandish the blades Of his teeth He snapped and he grasped And he hacked at the clasp And the hinge and the cover released And hey diddle diddle There was the.. Yur! That’s no fiddle! He glared at the masterpiece As it gleamed in the sun As it hummed As it sprung From the clasp of the case underneath And wot in the name Of anyfink sane Is that? Well, wherever its from Whatever the song It couldn’t belong To a cat Unusual strings For a violin It was too round And too thin And too fat Ere this cant be yours Wiv yor little paws Admit it You nicked it Your’ clumsy claws Those clever chords? Like you’d never find Wiv a map! Ebenezer gasped As if it wasn’t bad enough To be hunted and hounded Trapped and surrounded By dogs But to hear such an insult The lies! The affront! It was too much to take To be branded a fake By a flea-bitten bounder Like Trog So he struggled and cried But its mine, but its mine! I’ll prove it He yelled To the mob I’ll play you a song And if I get it wrong You can eat me with corn on the cob And out in the shadows At the space of a pace and a bounce An army had gathered That could gobble them all As quick as they’d gobble A mouse For each had their orders To battle marauders One false move One hackled hair of a dog And Ebenezer’s army Were ready to pounce And Trog’s little gang Would find that the fang Of vengeance was bared And about to be shared By Bob It was almost a shame When Wayne the Great Dane Decided the sane way to act Was to free the musician To ease his position And give him his instrument back So he prised with his paws He incised with his jaws As he gnawed and he sawed at the gap And by this endeavour Successfully severed The boards and the bars of the trap As the boards fell away And the barriers decayed Around battered and brave Ebenezer The prisoner released Still tattered and teased But Finally freed Ebenezer Decidedly dazed And frankly amazed To be holding again his master-piece Ebenezer Unlocked And holding the keys Rose from his knees And he played ROCKSTAR BANJULELE From the very first note From the moment the song sang alive With a sound to astound The circle of hounds Music abounded Surrounded Resounded It pounded From alleyways bounded To wide open skies With a thunder of paws To a storm of applause The melody poured As each new chord Was freed to the fall And the rise My Dog you’re a god! Called Trog the Dog Good Golly! Mused Molly the Collie Flip that was Fab! Cried Slab the Lab Do it again! Wailed Wayne, the Great Dane Not Bad for a Mog Said Pog The Sausage Dog Ebenezer took a bow Er.. Thanks, he sighed So kind, he lied But can I go home now? Then a call From a wall A shock to them all No please can you stay We love it, Oh Play! Yeah more, Mon Amour Said the voice of a door In a tone that he’d known If only too seldom before Then a cry From the sky A command from on high Ebenezer, Rock’n roll! Give us rhythm Sing some soul You surely didn’t think We’d let you sing alone? Ebenezer sings ‘Rave On’’ If Ebenezer was surprised To find his audience comprised Of friends so gladly recognised It was nothing to the jolt The astonishment, the shock The silence of the dogs The jaws dropped When Trog the dog Just stopped As he bopped As he stifled a sob When he found he was dancing With Bob Good Evening Said Bob To Trog the Dog I Don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure So kind of you, I think To organise this little gig I’d hate to put You under any pressure.. But I’m sure you’ll explain To make it quite plain Just what kind of game Altogether You thought you could play If you dared to delay Our proud protégé Whatsoever And I’m sure you’ll allay Our concerns, our dismay At rumours of say An aggressor? Keep yur whiskers on guv Said Trog S’part of the job S’easily explained Please, don’ eat the messenger I may be a dog And a bit of a slob But I got ears, and a brain.. See your Ebenezer He’s some kinda cat Wiv talent like that I take off me ‘att He’ll cut through the pack Like a hurricane And you wouldn’t want Any ol amateur So me? From today? I’m his manager!
Posted on: Fri, 12 Jul 2013 12:27:09 +0000
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