MISTER JIGGLES: RIMES from the BRINE - a powder keg of rhythm, rhyme, wordplay, and wit: a feast for the mouth and ear. Best read aloud - a fine fit for bedtime reading, improv, classrooms, and upstart theater.
A rhythm-forward collection of both playful and darkly comic verse, in a mode reminiscent of Lewis Carroll, Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein, or T.S. Eliot's
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. The high-velocity poems invite easy memorization and oral performance - indeed, several are songs and stomps. Some have grown from seeds of actual Bronx schoolyard chants or other bits of late 20th-century folklore, which are noted in a brief and colorful appendix.
A slightly mischievous collection - whimsical, sharp, sometimes dark - "A little spice is nice," advise the Brothers Grimm. "When you sugarcoat the truth / all you do is rot the tooth / that can flash a fang at the grinning wolf."
In a long line of trickster storytellers, Ted Cleary entertains with musical verse - and lively drawings. The book includes a QR code to a secret stash of backstage audio and author's readings and riffs.
Excerpt #1: BLINNY BLINNY BLIND
Blinny Blinny Blind
Is sightless like her Kind
She's a Mole in a Hole
'Neath the Huckleberry Vine.
She can nibble on a Kibble
And never ever dribble
And that's the whole Truth
It ain't no little Fibble.
Ev'r single Day's a lot like Night
To a Mole in a Hole,
An' a Creature out of sight
- But don'tcha think for a Minute
Her World's not brimmin' full
Down in that funnel Tunnel
-That Girl can rock and roll.
She can boogie with the Shoogie
And rookie with the Cookie
An' can make off with the bake off
-Jus' turn around and lookie.
She sings like a Master
An' plays the Telecaster
She dances like a Prancer
She ain't no Necromancer
But here's the real Magic
Of Blinny Blinny Blind:
She hears under all the ThunderAnd higher than a Choir And here's another Kicker
For a certain kind a Stickler
-She ate the Apple in the Orchard
And didn't even die.
But there's a reason for that
My tingle tangle Folks:
This wain't no Garden of Eden
Just some jingle jangle jokes.
Blinny Blinny Blind
Is sightless like her Kind
She's a Mole in a Hole
Neath the Huckleberry Vine.
Excerpt #2:
THE KIBBLE IS A BIBBLE
The kibble is a bibble
And the bibble is a bobbit
She put a rimple in the dimple
And a pimple in the pocket
She had her curry in a hurry
And a wickle in a wocket -
And a worry in a flurry
And now she's gonna stop it.
Excerpt #3:
THE THINKER
for Auguste Rodin I once thought
a thought.
Or at least
I think
I'd been thinking a thought
at the time
I thought
the thought.
But on second thought,
I think
I might not have
been thinking a thought at all-
You know,
a thoughtful thought,
the kind of thought
you should think
when you're thinking.
Anyway, that's what I
thought at the time.
I think.
TED CLEARY is a native NYC writer, artist, musician, and teacher. He's performed in rock clubs, classrooms, and onstage at Lincoln Center as the Pharaoh's sidekick.
His novellas have been described as "Hieronymus Bosch on jazz" and "Rachmaninov on the 7 train"; his Substack is
Whistling to the Boneyard.
