Friday, June 19, 2009

King Olaf the Penitent

…you can’t give a leg up to a footless man, thought the legless man. …thank the heavens I have no feet. Punting he sped across the blacktop, his paddles whittled down to matchsticks. Skidding he caromed sideways, avoiding a mishap with a woman carrying a footstool. …that was a close one. …thank the heavens I have my wits about me. (A seamstress from Altrincham, a stone’s throw from Cheshire, and a tailor from Santiago sit cross-legged under a blue gray sky stitching whore’s gloves with silver thread; both women aching, pining for Slough, the day unfolding like a many-layered cake).

Coming to a tapering halt the legless man swiped his brow with the cuff of his shirt, the woman carrying the footstool darting up the sideways hurriedly. Hissing over her shoulder she said ‘--Thou old melancholy devil, out of thy lament soundeth a lurement: thou resemblest those who with their praise of chastity secretly invite to voluptuousness!’
[1] Thinking nothing of it the legless man punted northward; ‘--a rube, and such fine dainty feet’. Looking skyward he intoned ‘--such a fine sky blue day’. She hung her hose on a gibbet to dry, crowing out the window into the gray cloudless sky ‘--caw-caw caw caw-caw!’

Everything blue turned yellow, everything red turned green and so on, until all the colours of the rainbow were back to front. Thinking this was odd, odd indeed, the man in the hat stopped and took in the colourful spectacle. The woman carrying a footstool scurried past, her hair willowing in the heavy wet breeze. Across the street a man with a lapdog, a beard of mud rimming its shithole, stared at the bust of King Olaf the Penitent, his eyes double-crossed on Olaf’s Miter. ‘--for the love of it!’ said the man in the hat, ‘--has the man no common sense?

[1] Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra.

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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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