| |
|
THEY SAID: HISTORY WAS
A SAUSAGE MACHINE W. WINGS
| Said: |
History was
centrifugal.
History was centripetal.
|
| Said: |
History was
certain, was certifiable,
was "diagnosed," came in a plain brwn
wrapper, plop on yr doorstep . . .
|
| Said: |
History was
full of ridicule, was a
cat-fish, a cat-o-nine tails, was
uneventful.
|
| Said: |
History was
up on the lift temporarily,
was like a sausage machine up on sawhorses.
|
| Said: |
History was
the venison sausage coming
out the middle, when you crank the handle.
|
| Said: |
History was
vexed, was perplexing, was
incandescent, was weird, came w. a work-force
& spoon, had naughty ways, had a certain
attitude. Come into Fort Bragg on a load
of watermelons.
|
| Said: |
They saw it
w. a torque-converter, saw it
talking to a waxed needle, eating a waxed
apple. The Big Blue Ocean was its caboodle.
|
| Said: |
History was
the main effort, the main fist,
the Panzerfaust, the main thrust.
|
| Said: |
History was
like Swiss Cheese, full of holes
like yr story, was the locus tenem of newspapers,
was the part of the village where the Auslaender
were never allowed, where you could never
get out, once you got in . . . |
"The whole pt. of HIST.," they said, "was
the main pt. (Which could have been otherwise, but wasn’t?)"
| Said: |
History was like a subscript, the Dome on the
Rock, the Via Dolorosa, the place in the temple
where the money-changers gathered.
|
| Said: |
History was
like a woodchuck . . . Mt. Pilchuck . . .
Was like Edward Said of Columbia University
chucking a rock. You pick it up, fist-sized . . .
You don’t know where it went after that.
You re-leas-ed it . . .
|
| Said: |
History was
a lightbulb moment, a waterfall,
a styrofoam cup, a pincushion, a pepper-grinder,
a multitude of sins, a prop, a sop, a labor
agitator, a stepladder, just a shot away.
|
| Said: |
History was
like a Spooner, a Nooner,
an Okie Sooner, a Prairie Schooner;
that it "could be that way if it wanted to."
|
| Said: |
History was
the block-house, a pet-mouse,
a guard shack, shock-treatment. Was a
Panamanian Dictator, a paratrooper w. a
pooper-scooper. A personal beef, a folding
shovel, a trick-sleeve, an obsession, a
recession, a digression, a factotum.
|
| Said: |
History was
just like the purple people-eater,
a Jerusalem Artichoke, the Cherokees on the
trail of tears, the Triumph of the Will,
the hammer and sickle, the pink triangle,
the Asiatic Swastika (read Aryan), the
magic moment.
|
| They
Said: |
History was
like a sausage machine w. wings,
up on sawhorses. Was the whole schmier, the
whole ball of wax. . . The badinage, the banter,
the easy give & take, the back & forth . . . |
|
