Don't Drop the Elf

here was a midget named Fidget and a carcass named Marcus and when it rained the two would sluice through the juice that ran down from the hills and take all the pills they found on windowsills. They would tell each other stories of Reginald Voorhees and the liquor he'd sick up when the moon's in full bloom. And in a rented room they'd zoom zoom zoom around the bed on bicycles and tricycles and roller skates that were Michael's. But since they were two and their feet were few they had to switch off and swap off and top off and trip off to keep it all in motion like a Laotian promotion. Sometimes they would crash and from his bubble bath a doctor named Proctor would shout all about it. He'd bang on the wall and make the Velcro balls fall and threaten to wet them with disappearing solution that would make them go away like a bay on the day the ocean turned to lotion.

But he never did.

On the twelfth day of May, which was May eleventh because of a quirk in the work of the calendar constructor and the fickle heart of a tart the day after he'd… uhm, plucked her. But on the twelfth day an elf may or may not have got sick with elf rot and feeling all hot and brimming with snot stumbled and bumbled and flopped in their room, spelling the doom of their womb of zoom zoom. So, forgetting to groom in the gloom like a tomb, Fidget and Marcus packed up their belongings with no wish of prolonging this awkward encounter, Fidget's Geiger counter going off like sentient meat at the meat counter, because it was broken, just a token from Hoboken. But in their rush and bluster and fluster, they packed up the elf and an old feather duster from up on the shelf that had been sitting there for twelve years all by itself.

And they were off like a shot, but a shot shot quite slowly, all tumbling and rolling like the gun was too oily, like watched water boiling or temp workers toiling or a sloth bent on soiling your favorite bandana. And man, Marcus ate a banana like Princess Diana driving to Montana—it took forever, so you know he didn't do anything quickly. So sickly as the elf may have been, and prickly as Fidget was when wearing all tin (and forget that side-note, it's too long a story and hoary and the end's much to gory and it cribs half of Glory, so just accept he's dressed in tin), they still got going like throwing a Boeing: Way slow.

But once they got moving the UV rays worked in their favor and they savored the flavor of a kiwi Life Saver they passed all around the car and the trunk, but the taste was all sunk after the elf got his chunk. So they pulled right straight over and kicked the elf to the curb, thinking a blurb in the paper better than this Elvin bedwetter, but he bounced! Not just once, and not twice, he bounced like rubber dice or like mice on dry ice, up the street, up the block and off of the clock and the dock and a rock and a Varsity jock as he tried to talk to a girl named Burl and the world began to unfurl as the elf binged and bopped off the top of a cop and a chop shop and a mop and a sign that said STOP but the elf did not stop. He dinged off the wing of a bird and a spring and a turd and a smear of milk curd that had spelled the word nerd.

The elf continued to zip and volley off the side of a trolley and the tip of a collie and your sister Molly. He bounced and he smashed off six tons of trash and an ounce of pounce decanted from a cat. And a hat and a rat were smashed just like that as the elf let out a yelph that he couldn't help himself. And yonder and way by the end of the day the whole damned world was broken and curled and beat-up and crimped and neutered and wimped and a high-flying blimp was the only thing skipped.

And that's where I sit as I write about it on the scraps of a strap that used to wrap maps. But our gas it has passed and our blimp is wrinkled and limp so won't you give us a hand or a small scrap of land or a righteous ska band? On second though, skip the ska band, we should probably just land.

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