The Mouse of Anarchy (for Jeb)

If power is everything and all you want, we can find you a courtier’s position consulting the nefarious Man Mouse of imperial Florida’s Magic Kingdom; however, you must know your place; look humble, pasty, pale, as if chilled by the ghost of Walt himself (flash-frozen upon giving up the ghost, for he who lived one life grand was sure to want another;  more, at least, than was allotted his humble beginnings: immortality, befitting his position as Divine Majesty of Cartoon Kingdom).

Beware the megalomaniac, Man Mouse! He can and will, with the click of a mouse, erase you, file by file, until you’re naught but a ghost in the machine. To live safely in the Kingdom and avoid harassment, you’ll want to situate yourself in the bland position of cloying, though ineffectually humble, servant. True, the unctuous conniving of the humble is transparent to anyone but the mocking mouse running the show, but regarding your position, who else matters? Surely not that fowl ghost who ducks under tourists, quacking,  “Sex here! Sex, for over-priced tickets to the Kingdom!”

It is said that he who enters this Mickey Mouse Kingdom through sex, scalping or subterfuge must humble himself before the mercenary Mouseketeers who want lifetime passes to the whole of Mini-Mouse  –  no ordinary mouse hole  — but who stands a ghost of a chance to “get any,” so long as the position of the MASTER MOUSE remains secure?

To position yourself as a brash usurper of the Kingdom is not only foolish but dangerous, since every ghost in the Haunted Castle, looking for a humble sinecure on Main Street, will rat you to the Mouse, who’ll deny you that Duchy you want in Frontier Land (cake position!), where Injuns live free and die of want. But then: even Bambi’s ghost might be hard-pressed to humble itself before the Kingdom of that vain,  soprano mouse.

Some critics have called Yizhak Maplebury “a poet of no small importance.” Others have called him “a small poet of no importance.” Little is known about Maplebury as he exists beyond the page. Unproven rumors have abounded that he was (and perhaps still is) a notorious gang-land/CIA hit-man, code-named, “The Egghead,” whose method of dispensing “justice” (for those who pay – him – unto those who most egregiously fail to pay the ones who pay -- him) inspired fear in the hearts of even the most jaded power-brokers on the world information/money market. The notorious NYC mobster, Boss Parcheesi, for instance, was mysteriously abducted from the locked vault he'd had himself sealed into, only to be found, what remained of him at any rate, in a New Orleans tobacco store, in a tin of what an unsuspecting, quite obviously horrified, customer had assumed, upon purchase, was a can of vacuum-packed, safety-sealed, fine Virginia pipe-tobacco. Again, these allegations are unproven. Anyway, what does it matter what Maplebury did – or does – to earn his “living?” We modern readers are not concerned with the life of the artist, but the value of the work... Read other articles by Yitzhak.