Crabwise and Operose

It’s not that I operate under the impression that my vision is oppression; and it’s not that I enjoy the song that goes “buffalo and bison, bison and buffalo / canonball and rifle, rifle and canonball…” — because I do enjoy that song. But your lachrymose moods and your teary discharges leave me feeling glum and dissociative, dissociative and glum.

So I approach you crabwise and operose, operose and crabwise…

And all I can add, as the singer sang, “that’s the way the thunder rumbles… that’s the way the bee bumbles… bumbles.”

So our relation has come to its inevitable violent end. You have pelted me with rocks and garbage for the last time. You will no longer imperiously rail at me that you are “the queen of bad moods,” or “bluer than blue, in your black converse.”

I now have this overweening desire to play Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance,” while replaying a loop of the 30 second scene from The Exorcist where Regan abuses and bloodies her demoniac self with a crucifix, 180’s her head and says, “Do you know what she did? Your cunting daughter?”

But in your pedantic manner you insist the line is “canting daughter, canting daughter!”

You add in that lovely manner of yours, “you imbecile! I have a PhD in Comparative Literature and an MFA in Creative Writing. Canting. Canting as in affectedly pious or righteous; alternately, to talk hypocritically and sanctimoniously about something. Canting!”

Then you hiss at me like a hackle-high cat.

And you wonder why I’m leaving as an attenuated truncated lower case word person?

I’m broken. You’re broken. This country is irretrievably broken.

I’m off to Canada to find me a buffalo wrangler.

“Hug me, mother of noise.
Find me a hiding place.
I am afraid of my voice.
I do not like my face.”

— Anne Stevenson / “Television”