L'aura del Campo

Spoon River breakout [164]

Spoon River breakout


We were happy.

After the hurly burly lives of small town Illinois, we wanted to rest. Spoon River wasn't quite like Masters said. Sure, we gossiped. What else could do. And yes, some refused to give up the ghost (pardon the pun) and get along. But mostly, we shared our memories through the roots that bound us all. A better system of communication than even Old Bell's.

So what happened?

The greedy owners of the cemetery wanted to bury abandoned bodies on top of us. It's not like we boxes of bones and rotted flesh are prudes, but these new brutes had new ideas and news that disturbed our sleep. They spoke of atrocities: missing commas, mispelled words and outright lies passing as truth. We Dead KNOW the truth. It's one thing to be dead, another to be reduced to bad grammar. We had to do something, they said.

A century of peace had come to an end.

We armed ourselves with proper rhyme, rhythm and reason and old-fashioned forms. We whispered complete sentences into the ears of the willing. We encouraged other to speak with common sense and eloquence. Even Young Ellie, who never did play with a complete set of marbles, made progress.

We made plans.

It would be cliché to say we waited for a full moon (we didn't) or that a wizard with a wand guided us (although... there were a couple of bitchy witches among us). No magic was used. We just waited until a garbage truck rammed into the iron fence that had bound us and released us. The hole was a tight fit for Doctor Henderson but most of him got through.

All was going well.

We haunted the hallowed halls offering MFA degrees. We figured that A stood for Art, but some of us got our mouths washed out for making suggestions about the true meaning of MF. We laughed over their trials and tribulations. The Dead have our own sense of humor... no matter what James Joyce wrote. And we yawned over their long weeping tears; we'd already done it all ourselves.

For a while no one noticed us.

We passed as zombie copy editors. Crossing eyes and drinking tea whenever someone couldn't figure out there, their and they're. But Hollywood caught on and decided to cash in. We suspect that's why they resurrected Jane Austen. Sense and Sensibility was the new motto. Prim and Proper was called upon to save the day.

It didn't.

We started to surf the internet (so easy for disembodied energy by-the-way). We began to be known as grammar-police as they mocked us with with run-on-sentences insane abbreviations and FYI trying to make us LOL at insipid jokes that never had a meaning and went on and on and on... and once their attention span was reduced to 10 seconds they began to tweet.

Bird song is pleasant.

It wasn't that type of twittering. Ever the Phobic Leader, even the president got sucked in. WWLD. What-Would-Lincoln-Do, we cried! We rattled our clavicles and tibias and then cried some more. We all resolved to teach him diction, a six-grade vocabulary, a bit of humility and a teaspoonful of kindness (bitter for him to swallow... we know) when he joins us under the sod.

Oh. Don't start cheering yet.

It's a dirty job (and for sure we and the worms will do it) but he'll add a century of Purgatory and we just want to rest in peace. Our Peace, the quiet bickering of Spoon River voices, compiled in an anthology some of you, once forced, have actually read. But please take pity and hear our plea.

Bury him somewhere else!

© Kåre Enga (29.junio.2017) [174.164] /30:29.1/

NOTE: mispelled is misspelled ... on purpose!

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