VOGUE copyright Conde Nast
© 2020 h2omeloncholy@blogspot.com
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from KM Fikes is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to KM Fikes & h2omeloncholy@blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. No excerpt or link may be used for monetary compensation.
wood cut blocks illustration, Scholastic Books © 1963 Susan Blair
The Three Billy Donkeys
Daft: a NORWEGIAN Fairytale
Once Upon a South Carolina Road Trip
Once upon a time, there were three
billy donkey siblings. They all shared the same name: Daft. The
Dafts came in three sizes: plucky long-shot, centrist-standard, and
populist juggernaut-alternative.
Grazing at their leisure, the billy donkeys lived in ambiguous harmony. Until one day, a buzzard named
Monsanto buzzed and buzzed about until the grass, upon which their
founding fathers pillaged and plundered and their twentieth-cent
ancestors gentrified, had become too toxic for even them to consume.
The three siblings had heard of terms
such as 'displacement' and 'climate refugee' - likely from pizzly bears, that rare ursid hybrid when polar bears and grizzlies do indeed breed. The three billy donkeys were also about to
embark upon the perils of forced migration.
O'er yon was another
meadow of promising prospects. Lush as inviting. An emerald carpet like green velvet lining a South Carolinian church pew.
The buzzards, apparently, had yet to rally.
And so? Into that horizon of hope, the
first billy donkey, being ever plucky, set out – to merely survive.
And lo! His flee from cooperate-environmental decimation was
interrupted. A babbling brook began to roar. The road to the meadow
of delegate abundance found the smallest billy donkey upon a rickety bridge. Clip, clop...clip, clop. His
hooves announced him, echoing each weary step far into the field of representatively-diverse asylum.
The bridge had been occupied by a
troll. During his reign of terror, the troll had fantasized about
retrofitting the stolen bridge with a wall upon either ledge. His
wall was the antithesis of a romantic covered bridge in nostalgic
barnyard red. In the void that served as the mind of this troll, his
imaginary wall was, “The most beautifulest wall you've ever seen. Never before...such a wall's been great as this...no where in the world. The biggest. The best of the best. Like none. The very, very winningest...of all...walls."
Unlike the bridge, the wall remained a troll's delusion.
The troll could fright upon sight. His
skin was that of emergency-alert-code orange, his necktie was as long as the lies upon his tongue and his hands were as tiny as his
conscience. Many instinctively looked away. Grand Ol' P. elephants, however, who starred - bargaining Faustianly - into
the abyss, were turned into a sort of stone where their tusks were mummified. Alas, zombies incapable of speech against him.
Daft, the plucky long-shot, tried to hide his trembling before the troll.
“You there. I need a map to the
polka dots. Present me with it or you're fired,” the troll
snarled.
“Fired?” Still stiffening his shivering, “But I
don't work for you.”
“You won't see a blade of grass,
loser. You could...” The troll paused, looking over both
shoulders, “...go thru some things. Unless...you do me this
favor...with the polka dots.”
“I don't know much about them. When
I was mayor, I fired their first polka dot police chief
and fire chief. Under my tenure, marijuana arrests, amongst
polka dots, soared. But that was my strategy to target their gangs. A few of their leaders agreed to read my Douglas Plan yet stipulated that a nod towards my policy proposals equated no endorsement. I ignored that request and publicly framed their Douglas approval as candidate endorsement anyway. I know so few that my campaign used a stock photo
from not America, but the Polka Dot Diaspora, to suggest I'm more
inclusive. But there's another billy donkey behind me. She's my sister
and has damned the polka dots - maybe even more than me.”
“He better have..."
"She."
"She...um, bad news. 'She' better have. Cross then,” the
troll burped.
The first Billy Donkey Daft was free.
Sure enough, in good time, along came
the centrist-standard donkey. And as promised, more seasoned. Clonk, clunk...clonk, clunk. The troll raised his voice to try and mask his fart. “You think you can just keep going? Across my
bridge? What do you know of the polka dots?”
“I know two names well. Tyesha
Edwards, an 11-year-old murder victim whose tragedy I donned as a saddle upon which my 'tough-on-crime' bona fides might ride. And then there's teen, Myon Burrell, whom I allowed to
take the fall for Edwards in a woefully inept prosecution. When his mother died in a car accident, I repeatedly denied the under-age Burrell permission to attend her services. The polka dots are
handing me no key. But one who may have it? He's right behind me.”
“If he can't do more for me?
I'll...”
Daft's eyes roll, “You'll what? Lemme guess, I could, uh, 'go thru some things'?”
“You're a nasty piece of work. Be
gone.”
The second Billy Donkey Daft was free.
As promised, the third billy donkey
approached. As described, he appeared more substantial with the bonus of volunteering
incredulous credentials before his hooves could be detected: “I don't just know 'em. I'm practically
an honorary polka dot. I’m their Daft and they're my firewall.”
“D’ya say ‘wall’? Get 'em to pay for it?”
“Polka dot loyalty is my reward for…”
“For what?" wheezed the troll. "Take that low-IQ...Anita Hill?” His nasal inflection becoming more prominent, “That '94 crime bill? Making Delaware a credit card company’s wet dream? Weren't those some of the gingerbready crumbs leading to the foreclosed doors of 2008 subprimes? The segregationist footsie before that?”
“Barack Obama would not have chosen...”
“Yeah, yeah," snorted the troll, "Well, I do the opposite of anything he did. C'mon, that's my shtick. You, Daft, and that kid can pass. That Hunter of yours? Tell him not to hem n' haw. Get it? Hem? Haw? 'Hee Haw', right? 'Hee Haw'...cause...you're..."
"Uh...donkeys...yeah."
"Cause in my pasture, you're no 'hunter' unless you shoot on sight. Don't even think about it; don't think at all."
“Look, the fact of the matter is: you hijacked this bridge. But that’s it. Beyond that, the whole pasture…”
The troll slumped under his wall-less
bridge, slouched over his phone, and his puny, code-orange fingers
began to incoherently tweet. Briefly, he confused his punchy typing with the soft hooves of another billy donkey. TIP$, tap...TIP$, tap. Smaller in physical stature than the last three billy donkeys yet with what appeared to be a gargantuan pouch - seen more commonly on kangaroos or wine-cave dwellers.
“Humph,” the troll sniveled, "Only supposed to be three of you Dafts."
"We're quasi-estranged. They act like I don’t do my fair share."
"Sounds divisive. Rifts are my 'raft'...copycat. Haven't seen you, kitty, since New York. So...what about the polka dots?”
“My Stop-and-Frisk policy is in the
past. Yet certain civil rights violations can still follow a loose logic: Smoke? Maybe fire. 'Broken window'? Eh... And redlining? It actually held a hidden wisdom too.”
The latest billy donkey and petulant troll
were startled by a mighty clomp, jarring stomp, and ear-splitting
neighing that shook the bridge with such a force that the populist
juggernaut-alternative slipped into the stream. He recovered enough to
barely float himself upon the primary shore. The pouch, apparently, could inflate.
Before the troll was a creature of your yore...your, a hybrid akin to the prizzly bear. Parentage? Billy Donkey + Internet Troll = Satyr/Pan/your garden-variety faun (with all Greek n' Roman mythic implications).
“You're...you're..." The pure-bred troll soiled his bespoke Brioni trousers. "Heard of you, yeah. But no one's actually seen
you. Not before me. You're...one of those...oh...Bernie Bros.”
The neighing of the creature reached a
pitch – somewhere betwixt feverish and chilling, “Look away, MAGA bib, lest you dare to MAGsplain us."
“I've seen your work on the dark
web; you really should be on my team. But all I wanna know now is what
you know about the polka dots.”
“We don't see pattern. You’re Harlequin patch-checkerboard? Hell, herringbone! Whatever. We’re pattern-blind, see. Like your wall, we just keep telling ourselves that. We’re post-pattern and besides, anything repeated enough? Well, at least on the net, it’s bound to circle the drain of truth. And as far as the 'misogyny' charge? Who's she anyway? We searched Reddit and doubt Miss AhJenny is even real. What we do know? Us half-billy donkeys dig bitches. As far as you?”
“You're
an insult to trolls. Have ya any idea how hard that is to be? You’re some con of a gate keeper, let alone a bridge.”
And upon hearing those words spoken directly into the face of the troll, he dropped to the green earth, curling into an unnervingly tight fetal position.
Yawning, the Bernie Bro unfurls the troll's vainglorious necktie, wrapping it around n' round n’ round his orange arse like a ball of yarn. He pauses long. Inexplicably, a wind of empathy sweeps up both in a mystical intimacy of shared toxic masculine privilege. The new lines of the 'yarn' ball mimic the age-old creases of Bro's palm. Satyr Bern sighs, cradling the Brioni 'yarn' ball before hurling it(him) downstream, directly over a Monsanto-contaminated
waterfall, into the River Styx. There, a Sphynx pussyfeline rescues it(him).
The Sphynx bounces the ball back n' forth in her paws. For all eternity.
Henceforth, the Billy Donkeys Daft - plucky long-shot, centrist-standard, and
populist juggernaut-alternative - all got over. How they crissed and how they 'crossed' the troll's bridge, exploiting and appropriating the fraught as dire narrative of passage. With nary a polka-dotted clue - peaceful as piteous - they graze.
And they grazed obliviously ever after.
The Three Billy Goats Gruff is a NORWEGIAN fairytale, first collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe in their Norske Folkeeventyr - initially published mid-1840's.
a clever as compassionate critique
on the implausibility
of POSTness
© 2020 h2omeloncholy@blogspot.com
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from KM Fikes is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to KM Fikes & h2omeloncholy@blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. No excerpt or link may be used for monetary compensation.
