Once, upon a midnight boring, as I sat, alone and
poring
Over many a quaint and curious volume
of electric bills,
Suddenly there came a thumping, as of someone gently
bumping,
Or a pair of hamsters humping
underneath my window sills.
Scant attention was I paying, as my thoughts were gently
straying,
And the stereo was playing
"Greatest Hits of Ish Kabibble";
All at once, a vast, unpleasant
grackle, black and irridescent,
Flew into my
chamber window like a wayward dirigible:
Quoth the grackle: "Wibble, wibble!"
All unmoving, all uncaring, long he sat and watched me,
staring
'Til I lost all sense of bearing and
my lips began to dribble;
Then that grim and grisly grackle looked at
me and gave a cackle,
And his hoarse and
croaking crackle made my very giblets gibble:
Quoth the grackle: "Wibble, wibble!"
I was taken quite aback, although I knew 'twas but a grackle;
In the face of one so black, alas! my face turned
white as chalk,
For though I am not religious, still I felt it was
prodigious,
And I cried out to this creature
that had learnt somehow to talk:
"Tell me, tell me, cryptic Sibyl, what you mean by 'wibble,
wibble';
Could it be some ancient shibboleth
for centuries unheard?
Are these words that you have spoken to be taken
to betoken
Something else? Or are you
jokin'? Are they meaningless? Absurd?"
"Wibble, wibble," quoth the bird.
Then I thought, "A swift attack'll shortly rid me of this
grackle",
And I cast about to find myself a
poker or a broom;
But the bird, as though denying me the chance of even
trying,
Took to fluttering and flying 'round
and 'round about the room.
With a burst of laughter ribald, once again he 'wibble,
wibbled',
As he settled for a moment on a
pallid bust of Trakl.
Then the grackle dropped an oily purple dropping
on the doily,
And he set himself to pecking
at a random bit of spackle;
"Wibble,
wibble!" quoth the grackle.
It would take a block and tackle now to rid me of this
grackle,
For the evil hearted jackal isn't
lonely anymore;
Now his every kin and sibling comes to join him in his
wibbling,
And their nightly noise is
nibbling at my spirit's very core.
I am welded to this grackle with a strong and sturdy shackle;
By his beak am I impaled, as was Mercutio by
Tybalt;
Since I can not last these pains out, I must blow my silly
brains out,
And I'm going to pull the
trigger when this final verse is scribble't,
'Ere the final "Wibble"'s wibble't!
