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Tuesday, August 26, 2014

People Say



Baudelaire was left-handed.
People also say he drank. As one
who knows, I can tell you,
there's some truth to each of those
claims. But it's complicated, because
these two life-long compensatory
behaviors are like evil twins who
make their home in his breast;
beneath their pink and cozy
firmament, they squirm like
snakes, if snakes were made of
tar and wax; these devils twist
and braid their breakable bodies
together, and snare the ancient
sounds of what poor strands
of his own remain to him, in any
vague but somehow recognizable
shape that evokes memory from
the perforated, also twisting,
black eels that are all that's left
of his once really quite notable brain.
I can tell you that... and no one
else can, because I'm the one
who knows it. But just as he was fond
of saying when he found himself
near, or more likely already long
past, wit's end, he'd intone with
his crooked smile, but which
I'll forego: “Ah, but I digress.”
I'll spare you the bloody detail,
the grim lot issued by drink, a chit
redeemable only in Hell, one that
daily finds with freshened vengeance
even its lesser acolytes, men nowhere
near so loyal as Lairey. I can tell you
the secret to his effortless, even
graceful, albeit entirely assumed,
left-handedness, though. The simple
quirk of anatomical fact that's behind
that distinctive look he's got; and further,
has got it doubled, actually, that
universally recognized, one sure
give-away that even in silhouette
or shorn of the context of a mate,
still fairly screams: “left hand.”
Well, it's because both of his arms
end in hands whose palms, each
present their respective thumbs
as quite plainly emerging to the
immediate left of the palm's base.
Why, it's the very definition of a
left hand, the classic clinical description,
But, listen, Lairey has two! the same!
one on each side! So, and I suppose
this is the funny part, he could hardly
help but be left-handed, eh? Well,
I shouldn't joke, because actually, it's
far worse where his syndrome
has taken him. It began at birth.
Lairey was a twin, twin grotesquery,
they all said, because, as it happened,
his dominant brother, in the womb,
took most of the limited supply
of toes they'd been issued. Poor
Lairey's two feet, opposites, thank
the Lord, had to get on with but
a single toe, between them.
You'd drink, too, I think.
Plus, already his eldest son has arranged
that once the old bounder's finally
drunk himself clear through to death,
he gets the hands, and that,
free and unencumbered.



Grand Landing


I don't see why, in general,
big feelings are so important.
And I'm not certain entirely that
they are. But I will allow, in lieu of
countering argument passing
that this is not entirely unexpected.
that this would be introduced. I was
in the mean time hunkered down ...
in nasty billet, you could say,
waiting for something that would be
wearing its name on its sleeve, that
would allow me to enter into it
with no particular invasion of
its or her bodily integrity, nothing to
call attention to Mr. Slippery Damn Goose
and his private predations, nor their
patented predilections for the particularly
perverse, a collection I'd had a hand in
building. Well, you say, answer me
quickly, You say why am I not
wearing trousers? You're asking me,
that? Is that me to whom you speak,
so free, and by the way. would that be
your simple standard query, fleshed out
and flushed before lunch? Or something
more complex, perhaps, a rule-based
inquiry, say, something in your
maximal rhetorical flourish? Which-
would-that-be? Why, yes, I'm asking you;
do you see anyone else? If you see,
for instance, anyone at all, mucking about
who identifies as one preferring to come
straight to the point, where I'm going,
that is, that point, that singularity of all
singularities and associated sending units,
then just please, send them right along
to me. As per the inconvenient deficit
of any state of wearable trou, the
aforementioned, yes, well, simple fairness
compels me to admit that: strictly speaking,
I don't even have legs, so perhaps then
these thin vanadium cables, in this
sore pinch, must suffice. Yes?