Saturday, May 10, 2008

La Rue de La Maltese

A beggar with a gamy leg scrabbled inwards across the thruway in Tel Aviv-Yafo, Tel Aviv, a small bird cradled in the palm of his upturned hand. In Rabat, Rabat-Sale a beggar with a gamy leg scrabbled outwards across the expressway, a small bird coddled in the palm of his outturned hand. Unbeknown to one another they started the day in exactly the same manner, a bird in the hand, legs trebled and trilled with gaminess, each crisscrossing across the blacktop, the asphalt hotter than hell itself. ‘I need a bath’ thought the first beggar. ‘I too’, thought the second beggar, neither aware of the other’s need. Things happen in different places at the same time, neither thing or place aware that the other exists at all. One beggar with one bird in one expressway, thruway superhighway at the same time, but in different places. The world is a strange place, strange indeed.

In the town of Rybnik in the township of Katowice Poland a beggar with two gamy legs crossed the superhighway with his eye pressed closed, a wren’s foot keychain clutched in the palm of his hand. The one-eyed beggar stippled and crimped across the blacktop, the wren’s foot keychain jingle jangling in his hand. In the canton of Helsinki in Southern Finland a beggar with no eyes and a no legs cambered across the slick blacktop, a tiny blue bird’s egg balanced in the unturned palm of his hand. A beggar in Elmhurst New York shot himself in the foot, slowing him down as he crippled across the superthruway backwards crossways, a can of Hero’s Malt Liquor bobbling in his feeble hands.

A feeble man with a feeble stride strode defiantly across La Rue de La Maltese. Without any knowledge or care of where he was going, he headed westerly then easterly, then stopped, thought for a moment, and strode southerly then northerly, his flatcar cap kipped in the lining of his coat pocket. The feeble man with the feeble stride knew the Helsinki beggar and the beggar with two gamy legs from Katowice Poland, having met them both at the church bazaar one Saturday in May. All three men, beggars by trade, were in town on the same day for the inaugural opening of Ships’ Day. They ran into one another at the church bazaar, as all three men (beggars by trade) were in search of a Pop-siècle placemat with a dory sideboard. The legless man watched them from a distance, his scrap of cardboard kitted beneath his stump-ends. He overheard that three strange men, beggars by trade, were due in town this day and was curious to get a glimpse of them.

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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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