Saturday, August 29, 2009

Collofino Olbrich

Mullingar ran the photo booth at the church bazaar. For 25-cents you could have a photograph taken of yourself and watch it develop right before your eyes. Mullingar won the Rollei Instamatic for an essay he wrote on choiring; second place going to an essay about deep-knee-bends written by an asthmatic. Vilna Kroner was born in Sebastopol in 1958, son to Abe and Lois Kroner, brother to Oliver and Stu, grandson of Haskell and Marjorie O’Casey, on his mother’s side. Vilna spent weekends and holidays collecting odds and ends, things small enough to fit in his sachet or in the basket on his bicycle handlebars. He had a particular hanker for old bottles, green, brown, yellow, blue and navy, match packets and shiny bits of glass, green, blue, orange, yellow and black. One day he found a crate of spoiled oranges in the alleyway behind the Seder Grocer; on one of the spoiled oranges was written,

"If there were no commandments, no duties in the world, I would die, starve, be crippled by boredom. I only have to be spurred on, compelled, regimented. It suits me entirely. Ultimately it is I who decides, only I. I provoke the frowning law to anger a little, afterwards I make the effort to pacify it."
[1]

Phil Villefontaine, cofounder with Abe Abingdon of the Oxfordshire Orange Co., met his demise at the hands of Haskell O’Casey on the 10th of August 1900andaught. Vilna’s grandpappy beat him senseless over a crate of spoiled oranges, shouting ‘a man ought stand by what he sells… and you, sir, are no such man!’ Mishearing fishcakes for fig cake he beat the man specious with the clubs of his fists. ‘God almighty’ shouted Cecil Funcke, ‘…you’re going to kill the man!’ ‘mind your own business’ huffed Vilna’s grandpappy, ‘…or you’ll get some of the same’. At that moment, unbeknown to the people gathered taking in the beating, Dejesus stared into the fiery blazing sun, his eyes flashing blue murder. Bumping and trundling along the sidewalk came a wheelbarrow, a cock sitting pretty in the barrow, its cockscomb sweltering red murder. ‘we live in strange times’ said Dejesus to Cecil Funcke., ‘strange in deed only… everything else is gravy’ replied Cecil Funcke.

MacFlecknoe gave the bum’s rush to Thomas Josef Stanton, ‘you foolish scat!’, Collofino Olbrich laughing a stitch in his side. ‘strange’ said Funcke, his eyes rolling back into his brow. ‘who would have thought MacFlecknoe would waste his time on a scoundrel like Stanton?’
[1] Robert Walser Jakob von Gunten

No comments:

About Me

My photo
"Poetry is the short-circuiting of meaning between words, the impetuous regeneration of primordial myth". Bruno Schulz
Powered By Blogger

Blog Archive