The adventures of a mock hero. Dedicated to my cousin who goes on a diet. |
THE LABORS OF HERCU-pig O, little dear, should I beg an ear for my song? For I had composed such hymn for so long By the time before your grandfather was born And has just finished this new Monday morn. I told it was a song when I don’t really sing If I do, birds might grow a fin and fishes, a wing But hear still the labors of Louie Hercu-pig As he sets out for tasks that are hard and big. ‘Tis afternoon when a sour voice by the platter complained “Why do at courses sheeps always suffer the pain?” It was from the mutton pie standing by his master’s desk “Why don’t you go for a sweet cured ham instead?” Hearing this, poor Louie Hercu-pig resolved not to eat “For I am not going to turn as a ham,” he willed. An advice was given by his old good friend, Mirahna, the cat “Why don’t you accomplish labors to reduce your fat?” And so he journeyed in a quest to become slim “For no one shall bring me to the butcher as long as I’m thin.” Not so long after three drops of sweat, he sees Across the green open fields, a golden hen who sings She, of golden feathers called herself HE-uNice And sent him away to do her good tidings He must go forth and fetch her golden egg Which was stolen by three rascals in the forest up ahead. Completely overjoyed by his first labor He dances waltz in all feet four “I am a handsome pig! A handsome pig! A handsome pig! My name is Louie Hercu-pig. A good thin pig! A good thin pig!” Merry Hercu-pig of curly tail thinks other songs But halted at the sight of a grasshopper who mourns Grasshoppella, she sniveled, was her name Tears to offer for the King of grasshoppers who grew lame. “But if the leaf of carved diamond be brought Then such is the cure to His Majesty’s distraught Take heed and go for the cure,” she said “Which was stolen by three rascals in the forest up ahead.” And so my tasty little dinner went with all haste Determined to give the three rogues a bloody chase But when he blasted the door and ripped it open He found a drunken butchers’ den. Off he ran as fast as he could Before a feast is made by his flesh and be cooked And there Hercu-pig flew for his freedom While the butchers flew for their ham. O, yes, they had been running the rest of their lives Even from the time humans call Renaissance Traversing the freezing zones from Arctic to Antarctica Tiptoeing the equator line from Asia to America. O, yes, the race had long begun, hard and tense Even before human wrote their (so-called) greatness The heated battle between life and ham That even coincided with the first nuclear bomb. Finally, O yes, the nonsense battle ended as it should By the Strait of Gibraltar where the Pillars of Hercu-pig stood When the trio of idiotic butchers grew old and weary And sunk deep down the Mediterranean Sea. And Louie Hercu-pig returned to the old den To find the golden egg grown to a golden hen The King of grasshoppers had long been dead And so the diamond leaf the young king inherited. His lifelong labor finally bears its fruits For all that running, half his weight was reduced He had now grown the strongest biceps Lumps of hard tissue are now his muscles. And as a reward for his labors, they said An important job by the coast to him was handed Now working as a lifeguard, so prim and hunk Flocked by lady pigs in his pink swimming trunk. |