The Lorax

With the auspicious help of the most competent hanbot.

Right across a few cracks where some fickle grass grows and the wind smells slow-and-sour when it blows,
Where no bird would sing nor doorbells could ring is the Street of the Old Lifted Lorax.

And deep in that grass, some people say, if you look close enough you can still see, today!
Where the Lorax once stood just as long as it could before somebody lifted old Lorax away.

What was the Lorax? Any why was it there? And why was it lifted and taken somewhere ?

The crippled Ef-deer still lives there. Ask him. He knows.

You won't see the Ef-deer. Don't visit his cove. He stays in his Rosekim on top of his stove.
He stays in his Rosekim, buried under his trove, his clothes made of moldy old muffles he wove.

But on special dank midnights in April he peeks out of the shutters, and sometimes he mutters.
That's when he'll tell how it all went to hell.

He'll tell you, perhaps... if you're willing to pay.
On the end of a rope he lets down a pail, wherein you must toss fifteen cents. And a nail.
And the shell of a great-great-great-grandfather snail.

Then he pulls up the pail, makes a most careful count, to see if you've paid him the proper amount.
Then he makes a note, and files it by rote, and constructs an elaborate Shrine of the Mote
Then he hides what you paid him away in his Flue, his secret strange hole in his dubious pew.

Then he grunts: I will call you by Whisper-ma-Phone, for the secrets I'll tell are for your ears alone.

SCHLEP!

While the Whisper-ma-Phone schleps red files in your ear and the old Ef-deer's whispers are not very clear,
Since they have to come down through a synergy hose, and he sounds as if he put things up in his nose.

Now I'll tell you, he'd say, with his teeth sounding gay, how the Lorax got lifted and taken away...
It all started way back... such a long time ago... back when Queen Clover still had her chateau

When the turf was still green and the pond was still wet and the clouds were still clean, and when men could still bet.
The morning I came to this glorious place and I first saw the trees! The Insurgency Trees! The bright campy fuzz of the Tammany Bees!

Pile after pile in the fresh morning breeze - out of piles of sleaze I made newspaper cheese
While frisking about in their Bar-bar-loot suits spinstery codgers admired their boots
As they swayed in the shade eating suede and grassroots.

From the purplulous pond came the comfortable sound of that menacing walrus named Wallace who drowned.
But those trees! Those trees! Those tremulent trees! All my life I'd been searching for spirals like these.

The touch of their tufts was much softer than silk and they had the sweet smell of fresh butterfly milk.
I felt a great leaping of joy in my heart. I knew just what I'd do! I unloaded my cart, let out a great fart,

In no time at all, I had built a small shop. Then I chopped down the unions in one single chop.
And with great skillful skill and with great speedy speed, I knitted myself a mechanical steed.

The instant I'd finished, I heard a ga-Zump! I looked. I saw something pop out of my rump!
It was... sort-of a mustardy Hun in a bun. How shall I describe him? That's hard, can't be done.

He was shortish. And borish. And brownish. And mossy.
And he spoke with a voice that was sharpish and bossy.

Mister! he said with a sawdusty sneeze, I came as the Lorax. I'll eat all your cheese.
I speak for the trees. Well... some trees that could be. Maybe. I guess. Who's to say certainly ?

And I'm asking you, sir, at the top of my lungs-- he was very upset as he shouted in tongues--
What's this THING you've made from the Insurgency spiel? Is it some sort of dubious, nutty new deal ?

Look! Lorax! I said. T'was no cause for alarm, just the tree I had chopped but that did no-one harm.
I'm quite the utili-titarian tool, I keep all my nerves on this titty shaped spool.
I've knitted myself a mechanical steed! A Very-Fine-Something-That-All-People-Need!

It's a shirt. It's a sock. It's a glove. It's a hat. It's a finely knit humectorheum at that!
But it has other uses. Yes, far beyond that. You can use it for carpets. For pillows! For sheets!
Or curtains! Or covers of bicycle seats! Or women, or even a new soundly beat.

The faux Lorax said, "Come then, hear the creed of the crazy, the lazy, the hastily freed :
Hurr durr hurr, hurr durr jerbs! Hurr durr hurr, hurr durr weed!
There is no one on earth who would buy that fool's steed!"

But the very next minute I proved he was wrong, for as it so happened a chap came along,
And he thought that the steed I had knitted was great so he greedily bought it for three ninety-eight.

I laughed at the Lorax, at his faux feeble cry. For as clearly shown by one well chosen lie
There's always a fool and there's no telling why or what any one fool might yet readily buy.

I repeat, cried the Lorax, -- I'm busy, I'm queasy, I'd much rather have a warm serving of peasy
I rushed 'cross the room, and in no time at all knit a radio-phone. I put in a quick call.

I called all my brothers and uncles and aunts and I said, what the time and the country now wants
Is the whole Ef-deer Family to get filthy rich! Get over here fast! Take the road to Ditch Nitch.
Turn left at Weehawken! Sharp right at South Stich!

So in no time at all, in the factory I built, the whole Ef-deer Family was working full tilt.
We were all knitting steeds, just as busy as bees, to the sound of the chopping of astroturfed trees.

Then... Oh! Baby! Oh! How my business did grow!

Now, chopping one tree at a time was too slow. So I quickly invented my Super-Axe-Hacker which whacked off four various trees at one smacker.
We were making steeds four times as fast as before! And that true or faux Lorax?... Never saw him no more.

But the next week he knocked on my new office door. He snapped, I'm the Lorax who conjures the bees!
Which you seem to be mixing up into your peas.

You remember the bees ? The once mighty Tammany bees ?

But I'm also in charge of the Brown Bar-bar-loots who played in the shade in their Bar-bar-loot suits
Who are one and the same with the bees but distinct as a matter of law and district and precinct

Now...thanks to your hacking my trees to the ground, there's not enough fluffers and hash to go 'round.
And my poor Bar-bar-loots are all getting the crummies because they have gas, 'stead o'food, in their tummies!

They loved living here. But I can't let them stay. They'll have to find food. And I hope that they may.
Good luck, boys, he cried. And he sent them away. I, the Ef-deer, felt sad as I watched them all go.

BUT... business is business! And gubmint must grow! Regardless of crummies in tummies, you know.
I meant no harm. I most truly did not. But I had to grow bigger. So bigger I grought.

I biggered my factory. I biggered my roads. I biggered my wagons. I buggered the toads
All the steeds I shipped out, I was shipping them forth to the South! To the East! To the West! To the North!

I went right on biggering...selling more steeds. And I biggered my money, which everyone needs.
Then again he came back! I was fixing some pipes when that old nuisance Lorax came back with more gripes.

I am the Lorax, he coughed and he whiffed. He sneezed and he snuffled. He snarggled. He sniffed.
Ef-deer! he cried with a cruffulous croak. Ef-deer! You're making such smogulous smoke!

My poor Swomee-Swans...why, they can't sing a note! No one can sing who has smog in his throat.
And so, said the Lorax, --please pardon my cough-- they cannot live here. So I'm sending them off.

Where will they go?... I don't hopefully know. They may have to fly for a month...or a year...
To escape from the smog you've smogged-up around here. What's more, snapped the Lorax. (His dander was up.)

Let me say a few words about Gluppity-Glupp. Your machinery chugs on, day and night without stop
making Gluppity-Glup. Also Schloppity-Schlopp. And what do you do with this leftover goo?...

I'll show you. You dirty old Ef-deer man, you! You're glumping the pond where the Humming-Fish hummed!
No more can they hum, for their gills are all gummed. So I'm sending them off. Oh, their future is dreary.

They'll walk on their fins and get woefully weary in search of some water that isn't so smeary.
And then I got mad. I got terribly mad. I yelled at the Lorax, Now listen here, Dad!

All you do is yap-yap and say, Bad! Bad! Bad! Bad! Well, I have my rights, sir, and I'm telling you
I intend to go on doing just what I do! And, for your information, you Lorax, I'm figgering

on biggering and BIGGERING and BIGGERING and BIGGERING,
turning MORE various Trees into steeds which everyone, EVERYONE, EVERYONE needs!

And at that very moment, we heard a loud whack!
From outside in the fields came a sickening smack of an axe on a tree. Then we heard the tree fall.
The very last various Tree of them all!

No more trees. No more steeds. No more work to be done. So, in no time, my uncles and aunts, every one,
All waved me good-bye. They jumped into my cars and drove away under the smoke-smuggered stars.

Now all that was left 'neath the bad-smelling sky was my big empty factory...

the Lorax...

and I.

The Lorax said nothing. Just gave me a glance... just gave me a very sad, sad backward glance... as he lifted himself by the seat of his pants.
And I'll never forget the grim look on his face when he heisted himself and took leave of this place, through a hole in the smog, without leaving a trace.

And all that the Lorax left here in this mess was a small pile of rocks, with one word...

UNLESS.

Whatever that meant, well, I just couldn't guess. That was long, long ago. But each day since that day I've sat here and worried and worried away.

Through the years, while my buildings have fallen apart, I've worried about it with all of my heart.

But now, says the Ef-deer, now that you're here, the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear.

UNLESS someone like you dies a whole awful lot, nothing's gonna get better.

It's not.

That's the end, said the Ef-deer, regarding askew all those piles of goop of the one thing he knew.
And so here it ends, and that's that, and fuck you.