Who Killed Tweety?

Nobody move. Tweety's dead! It's not a
pretty sight. Sly and Pepe
went for succotash and their alibi's air
tight, so Karma, of course,
immediately comes to mind.

Whoa, says Karma, I saw Ma Goose gift
that bird to Granny with
the express proviso that "if that Tweety
bird don't sing, I'm gonna
buy you a diamond ring." That gives her
motive, means, and
opportunity.

Provocative. But maybe Granny's being
framed. Little Alice looks
innocent, but they don’t call her speedy
guns for naught. She's
been trippin' in the mirror lately, down
the rabbit hole of her
thoughts.

I saw Jackie Candlesticks kick Tweety
right nimble and quick.
That's a lie! That canary played
knickknack on my shoe, so I
kicked him away but off he flew to the
kitchen, where Karma was
baking blackbird pie.

I was following the recipe, she says, and
had only three and
twenty, so was one short when Tweety
fluttered in with his
irritating voice, saying "Ooh, isn’t this
place full of smells.
Somebody cooking…feet maybe? You
should take the socks off
first."

And I thought, no one will know, and
threw the brick—but
missed—both brick and bird flew out the
window. Just then Lucky
the Charm confessed: I ate his nuggets
with extra crunchy Jif and a
ten-year-old bottle of generic distilled
white vinegar. They were so
tender, and magically delicious.

The Resurrection of Tweety

Only a miracle can save him. Let us
implore The Source. All you
muses circle for a prayer to Mister E.

Boo! We don’t even know Mister E exists,
nonetheless that we can
beseech a favor from some omniscient
Editor supposedly reading
aloud from the very same poem we are all
appearing in and who
can do the impossible by bringing a dead
toon back to life with the
stroke of a pen.

Look, here's the three wise guys from the
Gumby rhyme
family—Don Jimmy the Bull, Rock
Bottom, Sonny the
Cuckoo—they're always bragging about
the creche, how they
followed Pinocchio's Fire and brought
stamps, and sealing wax,
and ink.

How they knew his mom, Mary, and she
and Jiminy rode Pokey to
Bedrock because the Master Cylinder
was after the ghostling with
a nuclear accelerating proton pack. But
arriving at Porky's Inn, he
didn’t understand their language, as he
spoke only a Latin dialect,
saying, otnay inyay ymay ackyardbay, so
the breathy wisp was
born in a barn and placed in a trough
lined with newspaper.

He never had to shut a door thereafter,
for he was not only
intangible, but born in a barn. Mary
called Casper her little Lamb,
and Tinker Bell warned them to flee to
the Land of Honalee, so we
Joe Cameled it out of there. Then the
ominous Cock, whose
feathers are numbered, appeared and we
begged Help Us, Foghorn
Eggcorn, and he prayed Holy, I Say, Holy
Moly, Heavens to
Murgatroyd, and he took a corn flake,
and said In the Name of
Slimer, Oz, and the Friendly Ghost,
Drizzle, Drazzle, Druzzle,
Drome, time for this one to come home.

And he placed it on the dead bird's
tongue, and Tweety did come
back to life, but Doc Fudd said it's
nothing Mystewious, he
medicated the corn flake and canaries
can live without their
nuggets. However, Tweety will keep
passing out and falling off his
perch so can no longer work in the coal
mines, he's disabled.

Well, we can't pay him to flop around at
home, he can verify
receipts at the door, to make sure no
muses are stealing.

The Muses Strike Back

Now, Tweety with X's for eyes began
trending, and word got out a
gaggle of muses wanted Lucky’s marbits.
They had at first given
him benefit of the doubt, as his wife,
Lady Luck, daughter of
Father Time and Mother Nature, at
whose estate this reunion was
occurring, spoke on his behalf. He was in
his own in-laws’ kitchen,
after all.

Lucky was nonetheless afraid, so ran off
to hide in the catacombs,
where memories are buried but nothing
living lingers long, and the
Embolalia eke out their stutters in
indecision off the grid, those
Ums and Ers all but unnoticed on the
outskirts of the Wits, only to
come out of the wordwork whenever
sentences are uttered.

Inciting the mob, Tweety's egomaniacal
cousin, the former Mr.
Bluebird, now the logotype avian for the
Bedeviled Eggs, with a
crazy idea of re-hatching. The once
shouldered warbler was

wheelchair bound now, having lost his
left lower extremity at
Lucky's Daffy Pull & Monarch Wing
Barbecue, where his stuffing
unzip-a-deed last Doo-Dah Day.

They claim an accident got Mr. B caught
in the butterfly net and
dipped in the muskrat sauce vat where all
his feathers singed. He's
never been able to wash that stench off.
The grid's not wheelchair
accessible so the leprechaun easily got
away.

But the muse mob has run amok now
and is holding the host
hostage. They've put up a block saying no
more writers in or out.
They've reached the IT department so
communications are
confounded, we can no longer cross our
T's or dot our I's. They've
accessed the vulgar vocabulary and
breached the curses vault.
They just fired off an Asshole, threaten
to defame Karma next,
have a cunning follow-up for C, and will
progress straight through
the alphabet until demands are met.

Why not just meter and sonnetize them?
Gadzooks, Counsel says,
we don't want to lobotomize them. Let's
just pipe in a couple
couplets and put them to sleep, then
round them up and send them
to NOPO labor camp to make toys for
no pay.

John FitzGerald

Three Poems