vers libre song of mondays

[betteroffbad]

have you heard the legend of the cat who hates mondays
the cat has absorbed the thousands of jokes about cats created before he was born
the cat has become tremendously fat
not because of eating or lethargy but because of the weight of jokes
inscribed upon the image of the cat
some of them are quite complex
some are just a picture of a cat who would be frowning if he were also somehow a human
some partake of social contexts that can no longer be recovered
in which everything is unrecognizable and utterly indecipherable
except for the cat
which looks pretty much like every cat

one day a human took a picture of the cat
it was a chalk drawing on stone because photography had not yet been invented
writing had not been invented but around the picture of the cat
the human drew wavy lines
to indicate speech and concentric circles connoting dismay
it was before mondays had been invented
it was before you could really be sure of another day
the cat was the first cat it bore all the jokes that would ever be made upon it
in the form of four hundred ninety five lines and circles
in the firelight somewhere for a minute while it lasted
and later for hundreds of centuries in the dark


eventually long after and in another place the cat became flesh
and a little while later someone invented the granary and rats
invented stuffing themselves with the grain those skinny peasants had worked so hard to thresh
that was the dawn of the invention of mondays
they were not yet called mondays but the seed was planted
on the first monday in the history of the world the mayor of graintown opened the door to the granary
the cat who did not remember being drawn
on a cave wall or anything other than a few hungers
rubbed his head against the mayor's leg
and leaped into immortality