Saturday, April 26, 2014

But Where, Oh Where Is the Holy Idiot, Truth Teller and Soothsayer, Familiar of Spirits, Rat Eater, Unhouseled Wanderer Whose Garble and Babble Fill Rich and Poor, Homeless and Housed, with Awe and Fear?





I'm fine, thank you loved ones and friends analog and digital who emailed or texted wondering. I sat at my computer with a cup of coffee yesterday morning just like I always do and... it wasn't a fuck it, it wasn't a fuck this. It wasn't aargh or meh or dare. It wasn't feinting a bleggal hiatus. It wasn't frustration at Dead Blegsylvania. If there was an itsy-bitsy epiphany it wasn't sought. I decided to shut off the laptop and pick up the novel I'm reading* where I left off Thursday night. I do take days off every once in a while. I always give notice so people don't worry. I know my bleggal OCD makes me regular as a digital clock posting-wise. Thank you for worrying. I intended to post yesterday then just decided I wasn't. It seemed too blogslutty even for me to post a post that there will be no post today.

Later yesterday morning, at the dentist for a check-up, the waiting room flat screen was tuned to CNN and CNN was going Full Metal Bundy. The receptionist and hygienist tried to explain in whispers to the other what was going on in Nevada. I kept my mouth shut and my ears averted from flat screen, receptionist, and hygienist. It had occurred to me Thursday night when I was link-fishing for this post that once I would have written something about Full Metal Bundy - the actors, the producers, the audience. I didn't think about it again until I was in the dentist's waiting room and it was on CNN and the receptionist and hygienist were whispering about it, and I didn't think about it again until I wrote this paragraph Friday night after hearing WTOP tease a segment on Full Metal Bundy when I was tuning in for traffic and weather. I once would have written about my barometric pressure re: Full Metal Bundy, and apparently I still am.

I have, of course, thought about little else than my bleggal OCD since getting texts and emails - thank you - asking me if I was dead.













FABLE

Tom Sleigh

But where, oh where is the holy idiot,
truth teller and soothsayer, familiar

of spirits, rat eater, unhouseled wanderer
whose garble and babble fill rich and poor,

homeless and housed, with awe and fear?
Is he hiding in the pit of the walkie-talkie,

its grid of holes insatiably hungry,
almost like a baby, sucking in the police sergeant's

quiet voice as he calls in reinforcements?
Oh holy idiot, is that you sniffing the wind

for the warm turd smell on the mounted policemen
backing their horses' quivering, skittish

haunches into the demonstrators' faces?
Oh little village among the villages,

the wild man, the holy Bedlamite is gone,
and nobody, now, knows where to find him...

Lying in mud? lying caked in mud, hair elfed into knots?
Some poor mad Tom roving the heath

for a warm soft place to lie his body down,
his speech obsessed with oaths, demons,

his tongue calling forth the Foul Fiend, Flibbertigibbet
as the horses back slowly, slowly into the crowd

and he eats filth, he crams his ravenous mouth with filth—
and then he sits on his stool in the trampled hay

and deep-rutted mud, he anoints himself
with ashes and clay, he puts on his crown

of fumiter weed and holds his scepter
of a smouldering poker and calls the court to order.



3 comments:

  1. Sorry you missed "Blazing Saddles: Allegory or Documentary"

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    Replies
    1. I gave it a tweet bump but then never checked my timeline to remember (which is how I sometimes archive links I want to blogbump. I never got around to it yesterday or today.

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  2. Tweet bump? I've heard about this twitter thing. May have to check it out someday.

    Thanks! I want lots of people to see it (most of the stuff I write is for my own consumption, but this one's pretty good if I do say so myself.)

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