The Hunting
Of
The Famous People
Out the house and barefoot now the famous people pop, ping-ping out the door and into the fat of the day. The bricks putty up to meet them, these famous people, bubble up all bready and plush, So plush and so fine the places where I place my fingers and my feet say the famous people to themselves. The air, this air that they breath, never before has it ever been breathed. Up out of a Himalayan glacier it shoots, out the tail of a comet it fizzes, out from another dimension it sifters in to assemble a swirl in the hair of the nostrils, to gather itself into a fullness, to fill the hollow at the heart of the pastry. Like a portable cathedral is what the famous people are, buoyant is what they are, the famous people, and lighter than air and – look -- into the blue cavern of a cloud they float, bingo, tally-ho, cowabunga, yes, but beware.
Should you flush them out into the open, sure, there to catch the coloration, the pungent aura, the flash of the fur and the musky damp of the loins that set them apart (the shoulder and the brow and the powerful chest that furrows the hill and parts the rolling savannah) that would be swell, gee-whillikers, that would do the trick. Should you spy their hoof prints in a speckle up the banks of the river, the phosphorescent glow of their pyramidical scat, the brittle shiver of the porcelain tusk in a shatter against the hull of the schooner, carpe deum, buster! He who hesitates is lost. But if you wait till the wind changes, till the clouds fizzle and the sun falls and the leaves of the aspen crackle underfoot, if you wait till then to loose the hounds, my friend, to unlimber the trebuchet, induce the labor, uncork the volcano, my friend, my father, my consigliore, it will be – Defon Four, kiddeo, Defcon Four! -- too late.
So get cracking, Boyo! All systems go! Simmer back down to the baby you’d been in the days gone by, you fierce aperitif you, you captivator, you delectable bobbin of flesh. You can do it! We believe in you! Plumper up into a golden brown, you cutie-pie you, so’s to render yourself edible in their eyes, petable, lickable as the pup in the slick of the afterbirth, the honey in the paw of the bear, the nipple in the silk of the gown. Coddle up into a bubble at the crest of the breaking wave as you wait for them to --
Uh-Oh. Too late now! Here they come again, hi-ho Geronimo, up over the curve of the earth! Ten… nine… eight.... Maybe this time they will surrender. Maybe this time the kiss you blow in their direction will pierce them to the quick, the trajectory of your love intercept at a optimal angle, kapow, and into your arms they will fall, these chubby little pigeons and pigeonettes, these dino-busting meteors and meteorettes, these tender-as-a-blip-of-nitro-on-the-tip-of-the-hypodermic little godlets of hope, these famous famous famous people.