Thursday, October 11, 2007

Backwards Walking Dogs and Opera

Upon being hit in the head with a stone the shamble leg man exclaimedDodd’s Scuppers and Crocker’s Ale I’ve been beaked in the head’. (Projectiles, pebbles, tack-bags, tin cans and candy wrappers hit the shamble leg man in the head). He felt a crabbing at the back of his neck, a feeling that (without fair warning) something (a rusty tin of beans chucked out a passing car window) would find purchase on the beak of his head. ‘This is no way to live’ he said to himself ‘always in fear of something careening into the back of my head’. (The smell of creosote and labor-sweat in the air). The shamble leg man felt a tilting at the back of his head.

He stopped to readjust the cuffs on his trousers (wide-taper corduroy, beige) and continued on his summery way. He knew of a man (a very fat man) who had a dog that could walk backwards on its hind legs. The dog wore a hat (a colourful clownish hat) and a vest made from its own hair. As it trundled backwards (as all dogs, regardless of species or size, trundle when they walk) on its hind legs the dog barked out the aria from Figaro, its owner keeping beat with the tap of his foot. The shamble leg man saw nothing unusual about this as most dogs (or at least those he was acquainted with) could bark opera, and those that couldn’t simply kept beat with a tap of they’re paw.

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"Poetry is the short-circuiting of meaning between words, the impetuous regeneration of primordial myth". Bruno Schulz
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