Friday, March 07, 2008

Hoofdstedelijk Gewest Brussels

When the alms man shared his disagreement with the legless man, the legless man threw his arms up into the air and said ‘flat is as flat does’ and turned the other way, the stumps of his missing legs wobbling like pigs’ noses. ‘I have never been to Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest, Sarajevo, Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Caracas, Distrito Federal, Venezuela’ said the legless man. ‘But had I, I surely would have fallen off the edges of the world’. ‘Ngelholm, Skane Lan Narn, Galicia, Luton Luton, Athens Attiki Greece, Viedma, Rio Negro Argentina, West Orange New Jersey, Huntington Station New York, Brisbane Queensland, Dubai Dubayy (Syrian Arab Republic) Tengah Sulawesi Tengah, Riverside California and over there’ said the alms man ‘I’ve been there’. ‘In a cantilena in el Distrito Federal Mexico I ate a deviled dog’s tail, bone and all, and drank a dirty glassful of Tic-Tac with a worm at the bottom’ ‘I’ said the legless man ‘ate a dog’s gall stones mixed with tripe and fennel topped off with a hipflaskfull of boiled stinkweed gin’. ‘Where?’ inquired the alms man quizzically. ‘Toledo Ohio’ said the legless man ‘Toledo City Toledo Ohio’.

A Cracker Jack moon swung like a soiled diaper in the night sky. A hedging of stars, pinpricked with tiny perforations, scattering across the blacktop like scurrying mice, tails quarried between dung-coddled legs. ‘I met a man in Toledo who had three legs’ said the alms man to the legless man. ‘Where?’ asked the legless man. ‘Toledo City Toledo Ohio’ answered the alms man. ‘Between West Orange New Jersey and Huntington Station’ answered the alms man. ‘I ate a deviled dog’s tail, bone and all, and drank a dirty glassful of Tic-Tac with a worm at the bottom’ said the legless man. ‘Rightly so’ said the alms man. ‘Rightly so’. ‘In Rio Negro I had dinner with a dwarf and his wife, who was full-size, not small like her husband’ ‘Oh, I see’ said the legless man ‘full-size not pintsize like her husband’. ‘Toledo City Toledo Ohio, a dog’s gall stone the size of a hailstone’. ‘With a good rasher of stinkweed gin’ said the alms man. ‘A Toledo’s worth, yes’ said the legless man. ‘Smells like snow’ said the alms man, his nose quizzing and puffing out. ‘Yes, a Toledo City Toledo’s worth of snow’ said the legless man.

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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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