I had a poem from Mayor Daley, which I won't read.
Only in passing just read the quote that
got me going into the poem.
Daley said this, and didn't stay around to correct himself.
He was at a podium such as this and we
interviewed him and he said "The police aren't there
to create disorder.
The police are there to preserve disorder."
[LAUGHTER]
I put the inflection on the word preserve
but he said that in a monotone, and didn't correct himself
because he's so screwed up linguistically.
[LAUGHTER]
It just comes out for a verse, and he doesn't even
catch it to make it sound good for the audience.
He's not clever enough to catch it, to alter it.
Spiro tries to alter it, but it comes out the same falsehood.
OK, enough of the politics.
Now for the mythology.
This is Don Quixote de la Mancha and under that--
"My armaments are armed.
My pastime is in war."
And I kind of changed and altered history around
so that Don Quixote predates Jesus,
so that he becomes the mythological savior.
And then he has to be followed-- the Second Coming would
be Jesus.
And instead of waiting now, as we are for the Second Coming,
Don Quixote was the first and Jesus takes second place.
"He, Don Quixote, he carries strapped to his haunches
a small flesh parcel from his awl.
Riding off on a skinny charger.
Clothed in shagged vestments of a knight.
Followed by a fat monkish friend.
He is directed with caution of third grade simplicity.
Yet it is the purity of the scene
which strikes the eye, like a chiseled medieval triptych.
Resin dried in the brain, like rain on a hot copper roof.
The armor molded.
The helmet is eaten like a skeletons mouth.
He called, his head beaten and bloodied for food
to sustain the government of his gut.
Lying beneath each brown scab, a scab.
But the mind goes on without the arm.
Colliding with windmills, indentured
sheep, the chamber pot crown of mistaken errantry.
Then the renounced fantasy.
The signed will.
A populist, clothed in his spirit,
picks over the dream like old sores
to await another second coming.
Which detains us, and we again contrive the most fitting day
to ready the end.
The animals summon the page, and plant redemption
in the social head."