Strikes and Gutters

As Walter settled in to finish his coffee, he was struck

by a phantom, peripheral visage, white as pins in flight, or bunny

white, in haze — a visit from “The Agent,” in the nominal parlance

of chemical memory, calling from a distant muddied element.

Or was it merely the milk he’d spilled in a fatuous

fit, hooking out to the Brooklyn back of his cup? All he could abide,

he put his face down in the muck, and made off for The Dude’s abode.

“These are purple times,” he thought, “when pseudo-pious cliques strike

polyester poses while jockeying for pockets. And mocking fatuous

Donny? That sweet prince, that palsied, hiccuping flake of bunny

fluff?” Not for this aggression would he stand — not for that element.

It required satisfaction, and of superior sort to parlance.

Oh, but he would have his ear! Though for this spar: lance

and blade, tooth and trigger — less to mind, and more, would he abide,

in body to this immodest plum-clad receptacle. He popped a Velemint,

and rang His Dudeness’s door. “Bolted,” Duder’s hand had struck

in ink, “Out of cream. Gone to market. 8pm practice.” His buddy

was benumbed: “Dash this dairy! You’ve become fat to us

with cordials of coffee and curds. Oh, uncareful beverage! Such fatuous

froth and foam will be your undoing!” Yet not undone, but in parlay

with his special lady, laid up in zesty enterprise, coital as bunnies,

making maudlin moan. The story is ludicrous. Though if one abides

that one must “feed one’s monkey,” in manner most gutter-struck,

and not with precious prandials, “Brie pour lui. Et pour elle, 
emmental,”

one can dig El Duderino’s doings. All others are cowards — elements

without sentiment, without Johnsons or ethos, foreign and fatuous,

with lingonberries on leashes, and marmot marmalades struck

onto pancakes. Neither good men nor thorough, poor in parlance

and in practice, unable to fix cable or walk on water — though may abide

it when seated, in slumber, in summer, with clouds above, as Bunny

puffs on polish. The poor woman, helpless as a frail fawn beneath

a nude sun. A trophy wife, atrophied, fallen in with the wrong element:

known pornographers; sycophants; Aimee Mann. Difficult to abide,

and not exactly lightweights, is she herself to blame for her fatuous

caprices? Her husband’s lost legs? The Dude’s stained parlor

rug — his only tether, the life and memory of it, dimmed when stricken?

Oh, the little for which we are compensated. About the size of our abidance,

and theirs: some Credence tapes; a can of ashes, released to the 
elements;

specklike Brandt, crisp and shivering. A yet-to-be-dismantled toe, Bunny’s.