|
You expect mules to sing yo, hee, ho, like dwarves or nibelungs, not be the souls of swing. But when next at a light you hear some chap talk, or he has the radio on, it's not just like blue eyed Jack and Helen. They might look like cars, but they're mules of telecom.
 "Ah guess you come here Lem to run the bottom," Harvey sang out the window to the astronautic Pole. "But what is your text about the bare tomato, friend?"
The mules were telepathic. "Profanation of a pig," thought Lem. " Not what is but ought. First the tomato, then the ham gets big, that's our leader Merv."
Maybe we heard Ęthis once in translation, but no longer communicate.
Lem denied.
"Yarvey, I seen a violet chigger."
He pledged to Helen sidelong:
"Verst vessel, I scoot thy hinny bottom."
Helen frisked up her socks.
Lem harrumphed, but not in song.
Mule speech was a version of ancient tongue known to prospectors with spades and boots. They mucked about to dig fresh language universals, in other words, make mule thought a man's. What's wrong with man that he thought his thought gone wrong? That effort engendered all this meing, mooing, mewingmuling song.
The mules shared their feelings.
"Why can't a car salesman tie his shoe?" called Mervin, the aforementioned ham. "Cause he's worried you will too!"
Harvey replied: "What happened when a car salesman opened the door?"
They all joined in. "Harfs from the front, haws from the rear." "The serial numbers escaped." "He lost his tassels."
It was a scene from the social classes.
Then in order:
"My oh my what a wonder bonjeur."
"I got a feel-ing!"
"Wun-der-ful feel-ing!"
"Oh the warmth of a honky's ass."
Mervin, lead chorister, again led out:
"On Doppel, on Schussel."
Others followed suit:
"On hind end die blumen."
"Ass on Boddle."
"Bestrudal mine bier kanne."
They were just horsing around.
Man calls him mulish, but mules know his plans to terra-form planets. They know the man lost his life in his own garden, that his ear pod jammed. Bionic ears for labyrinthitis didn't make him hear. Where had all the bodies gone? He still doesn't know. The man of sin rode his back. The mules knew that. They called to him in scat.
"Om Dancer, om Prancer,
be smirchen sie hovel. . . ."
The mules thought themselves that the world was reversed. That mules could talk. Riders were mute. Molecules murmured. Croton was alive. But not in cars. There was still just the one man around, as before. You could tell by his spore. He talked on his cell. In mule code the man with earplug and blindfold believed he could hear, but the mule believer rode bare.
Each comedic phone took a turn.
"Curb the beast in a man and will you find a mule? A dog? A pony?"
"Shall we play Old Donny?"
"Do mules buy Beethoven?"
The chorus hustled:
"And in this mule we found an ape.
Eee haw, eee haw, oh.
And in that ape we found a duck.
And a holy cow.
With a swineherd here and a swineherd there. . . ."
They pantomimed ape routines from late night TV of his fears.
"We want our flesh but we don't want theirs!
"Think of all the disgusting hairs."
"Red Rob! It's not the flesh I hate."
"It's the indigestion of the pate."
"Oh, cover yourself."
"We fill the God hole with ourselves."
"There is a god for these hands and hearts, volks esse."
This parson mule was so sage he looked like a horse.
So is the beast in a mule manmade like in a car? Different versions of this quandary occur. A man blames his body. A medical condition. The more versions he has the more dangerous, because after them, liberty fell and periodicity came in doubt. Equanimity fell like a lightening bug. Hyperspace landings at the Pentagon were sold. Chronics complained: "we can't see it, we can't feel it, how do you know it's there?" They forgot what they were, wanted to make cabbalistic payments for the conflict of flesh until death. In the aftermath of this humorous wedding of the head, antiphony pricked the soft hearted aloe first, then truth. The mules had long since learned to sing what a man could hardly speak, but reversed.
It was out on the rest stop, hot and cool, when the dialectics began.
"Squirt the hose for wetness."
"Kick a tire in the leg."
"How do you know you're not just imagining?"
"Evil asks, 'Is there good?'"
But there is one thing about the mule spirit. It negotiates from the heart. These mules appointed their answers out of rock. Gaseous Garvey, Red Rob, Hickey, vied throughout.
All were Pegasusians.
We reproduce an audio portion for the internationale, the pod mind that cannot hear. Or you may strap a wireless on the tail.
Savor if you will.
It crested toward the feet of tourists making their way dialectically past, but wearing only sandals.
We could not translate this strudal vagen speech.
The mules were swearing.
Freeze the frame at the apogee of sense, the mule river running, asteroids fallen, but holding their breath at the stench.
How long can a mule hold its breath?
Philosophy held on the one hand, rather like a dog a puppet, while physics confronted the Freudian split, the proposition-adumbrated brain. It's not the grammar of the OED or the cable hop of soaps that carouses the mind. They think what they speak, but they speak what they hear. A little Virgil, misunderstood Spanish, mused pidgin, English and Japanese. This crew had just carted a company of Volkswagens. Those engaged with the Faust. Which led to the ultimate question:
"You mean there is conflict with the physical body?"
"It's a Mcdonald's without the meat!"
"A spiritual burger has spiritual meat?"
"There is no monkey wrench without monkey!"
Reasserting his mutter-sprach quest for meaning, Mervin dissertated man in his passion:
"But Johnny outran us, outran every other.
Johnny Cake,
Pan Cake
Hip like the law.
outran his brothers,
the wolf and the bear."
Then all the brothers joined in.
"They visited Darwin, but fell on a stone."
"Fox waited in spirit, hoodwinked the bone."
"Sly as a coyote, that one fox, dangerous as wolf."
"Friendly like a dog and prettier than all."
Crescendo: "thump, thump, thump, the animals come."
There had been talk all that day about the image reversed of raven and owl that hid in the buyer's intestate brain. When he indulged his emotions this fear provoked the impulse to buy. They graphed this on an upward sloping line. But there was no cooling off period. These mules knew the high and the low. They had the mo. Johnny was their image of man.
"But spiritually another case,
Johnny stuffed with cotton,
His shoe eyes were Ębuttoned,
The little rag spirit and loppy head
Were empty and hollow in bed."
Cap had a coda: "You could use corn shucks and wadding!"
It's as likely to hear of the rose from a wasp in the garden as it is to hear from the mule on high trail. Or the hawk overhead, the eagle clothed trees, the walnut wonder of everything that breathes. Do salesmen raise their hands and heads?
By now the mules were texting:
"There used to be an outer, there used to be an in."
"There's a spiritual organ in circumcision."
"Die dicke ende."
"Once circumcised, the truth is out."
"It's the fleshy heart of plaque, not yarrow stalks."
You can say mules don't talk, don't text, that the new car doesn't smell, that they didn't say that or that nobody could hear. Solipsism becomes a man of dust. Caroling washes him off.ĘSpeech will undo deafness. The elk, the raven, the mule song and the bear. Everything that has breath praises. But atoms kidded the man.
The mules were edgy to ride.
"Cut, then cover."
"Cut the fat."
"You can't take back the sac."
"Clothe the heart."
"I buy the rack."
What do you think the car salesman sold tonight?
Want to take it home and show it to the wife?
In the landing was the takeoff. Seatbelts everyone. Fasten your trays. The captain is about to depart. Upright if you please.
"Spiritual worlds ruin the physical."
"You think good is evil and evil is good?"
"The boy in the hood, the cow that could, dead meat for food?"
"Be schmutzen der esel."
A mule shook a hoof.
"Stay higher mind. Stay, stay put."
"A brick of a burger in spiritual speak."
"A burger will satisfy, not spiritual rock."
"What if the end comes and I don't think?"
We can get too much of this stuff.
Time was it was excellent to just say goodbye.
As all tourists in the astonished trail, by prearranged signal the fresh mules pushed out. Mervin with praise breath, bellowed the wonder-sprach, "espiritu speak."
|
