“Loeb” is a reference to Leopold
& Loeb, two students at the University of Chicago, who committed a
notorious murder in 1924, killing a 14-yr old kid just to commit a perfect
crime and thereby prove the superiority of their criminal skills. Their crime wasn’t
so perfect, turns out, and they were imprisoned for life until Loeb was murdered
in prison in 1936. The poem comes from a moment when B. was still in the hospital,
and feeling a bit paranoid. It describes an incident with a police officer in
an elevator pretty much how it happened, although I suspect he didn’t say
anything to the cop about eating his brains. I wouldn’t have. Armed meatheads
are like sleeping dogs. Let them be. I heard an interview with David Sedaris
once, where he told about running into an airport security agent with a bad
attitude, and Sedaris, who was writing a book of animal fables at the time,
simply looked at him and thought, “I’m making you into a rabbit.” This is
precisely why authoritarians don’t think much of artists—we do things like imagine
eating their brains or turning them into rabbits. We throw snide at them and
propose eating Irish children as a way to control the Irish population
explosion, who starved while England thrived. We write stories where the pigs
run the farm, but pretty soon you can’t tell the pigs apart from the evil
humans. How about “Purity Of Essence”? Hah! Problem is, uniforms and guns are
symbols of power, but power is generally more than symbolic. One story has
Aesop telling his animal fables to the people at Delphi, who were so insulted
that they forced him to jump off a cliff. For me, in about 3rd grade,
I remember a filmstrip about Aesop, with a drawing of him being chained to a
cart and ridden off to his execution. I guess that was a lesson about speaking
truth to power—for eight year olds! The warning didn’t take with me. I am wary
around the police, though. I’ve never had a problem, but I don’t them any
grief. Mainly because I respect what they do.
But I saw a police officer with a
high-and-tight haircut in a gas station last year, and I almost—almost—told him
what I thought about that. It wasn’t supportive. But I held off. A
high-and-tight is an inch or two wider than a Mohawk. It’s symbolically
circling around to the same place—a Mohawk is a statement of implacable punkitude
with kick-your-ass overtones, and high-and-tight means I’m fully prepared to Taser
your ass into convulsions if you don’t show me proper deference. I’ll ask some
basic questions later. Similar outcomes from opposite political motivations. Either
way, I avoid it. I saw GIs loading onto landing craft for the D-Day invasion, everyone
high-and-tight. Put me in that spot, and yep, I paint my face and sport the
warrior’s haircut. That’s the only attitude to adopt. But that cop I saw in the
gas station was a meathead with a badge, looking hard for some action. I
sympathize with B. on this one.
Comedy and satire are powerful
weapons though. Mel Brooks says his purpose in life is to point his finger at
Hitler and laugh at him. John Stewart and Stephen Colbert are some of our most
effective political commentators, and Lennie Bruce, George Carlin and Richard
Pryor were some of the most devastating ever. So, eating the meathead’s brains?
It’s ridiculous, but that’s the point. Now when I see a cop with a bad-message
haircut, I can think of better ways of cutting him down to size than starting
direct trouble. I wonder if he had his cotton tail amputated, or is it still
there tucked away beneath his gun and his silvery, jingling handcuffs?
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