Monday, April 21, 2008

Rotterdam Red Combed Cock

In the city of Americana in Sao Paulo Brazil lived a man with a monkey’s foot keychain. He bought the keychain from a man who knew the rug-thrower’s grandfather, having met him a few years previous at a cockfight in San Mateo California. The two men were betting on the same cock to win, a Rotterdam red-comb with one leg bigger than the other. The rug-thrower’s grandfather and the man with the monkey’s foot keychain lost, the red-combed Rotterdam cock being shredded to pieces in the second round. Needing a stiff drink to slake they’re nerves at having lost the bet, the two strangers went to a cantina for a Tic Tac and a round of gin rummy.

‘That cock was a fraud, not a cock at all’ said the man with the monkey’s foot keychain. ‘A fraudulent cock…a non-cock cock’ said the rug-thrower’s grandfather in reply. ‘I’ve see my share of cocks, more than any one man should see, and this, this was no cock’. ‘Indeed, a cockless cock, a cock without the right to be called a cock, in any language’ replied the rug-thrower’s grandfather, his hands shaking. Both men, who up until then had been complete strangers, shook hands and began commiserating, the rug-thrower’s grandfather offering to buy the first round, the man with the monkey’s foot keychain following suit with the second until both men had used up all the money they hadn’t lost on fraudulent cocks and fixed cockfights.

A (deviation from a rule or law, especially one specifically provided for) came screaming across the sky. Such a shame (a sham indeed) that man lives atop the ground, not squirreled beneath it toasting nuts-aplenty. We had (we did) an old rusted cock-full-O-nuts coffee tin that grandmamma made the ripest plum pudding in. She boiled the plums into a placental mush, two-bits of allspice and a thumb-pinch of thyme-O-plenty. We’d squirrel away the leftover bits, packing them into a Murex Band-Aid box, crushing and tamping and cramping the plumy placental mush into a neat bric-a-brac. Neither a coxcomb or a cockscomb in sight, nary a nary one.

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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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