Saint Dionysus the Cephalophore

“How many people would you say have had their nipples tickled by their own eye-lashes?”

— from the Greek for “head-carrier,” these are saints generally depicted carrying his or her own head: he carries his head in his hands [Wikipedia]

Yes, a cephalophore. One of the Fourteen Funky, also called *nothelfer.* Look that one up. Go ahead, take your time… Want a link? a hint? 14th Century Rhineland: plague: the peasants needed intermediary heroes and heroines, the church hagiographies obliged…

This hazel-eyed, bearded head, its edges rusty, is held facing forward at about navel’s height, pours forth an undaunted massing gush of often-intelligible words, most easily misheard by anyone in attendance as he stumbles along — recouler pour mieux sauter from time to time the headless body stumbling (a thumb accidentally in St-Denis’s good right eye, yes, why would it not?) hurting his lip and mouth when dropped…

Unnhh. The head, were it not a saint’s head (and rolling down a grassy slope) would toss a mild oath toward the peasant owner of those cumberhands. Sacre bleu! Above the turbid orange evening sky, from his elevated post on a woodless ridge a boy tending animals hears a muffled shriek &: “S’il vous plaît, retirez mon doigt de mon œil.”

“How many people would you say have had their nipples tickled by their own eye-lashes?”

Of the Fancy Four and Ten, I dare say no more than three. (though a truly expert halasana pose, in hatha yoga, could come close)

And now you will ask what did that headholder rant about as he wandered Montmartre so long ago

And now you will ask why tell us about him or any of those hideous god-whacked folks called Saints, Christianity’s demi-gods

— or was it yesterday — ?

I was a small child I was a tiny baby I fell in the crib I fell from the bed They gave me milk But I wanted cream I, I was the prince with no uncertain dreams. Utterly incomprehensible I told them I was the prince and they had better well you know get into order and buy me stuff and praise Jesus too yeah sure, if you want (easy, this, in the pre-guilt time).

I was a dour, old child staring long time at the easily imperceptible movements, skies clouding up, — one day’s sky unclouding itself into a perfect phrygian blue. Another day all fog all day and schoolrooms lifeless. Wondering about death when death’s symbol, a solitary Alabama housefly walked with ease, unbrushed, across the waxen cheeks of my first inanimate humanbody

“Dead,” they said. “Dead?” “Dead.” Unmoving. Immobile. Watch the fly crawl unbrushed across that waxy facial surface — was that really a dead man, a dead MacCann? No way. It did not look real and most importantly, the fly was not brushed away.

Today I feel I am ready to die. Yesterday — well, it was Sunday afternoon — I was ready to live. Readiness is a state I try to maintain at all times. But now… Now the dark falls and I truly can say I hear death calling my name screaming it rather loudly, “Come on home,” says death, in a voice just as natural as can be, amiable and prepossessingly persuasive: “Come on home, my friend, It’s where you’ve always wanted to be. It’s where you were in the beginning as it is now here in the end, voici!” Now the dark slide, the failure to get psychic traction as though the imagination’s core stood spinning, almost without equilibrium on top of a slippery pile of film several cubits high . . . (the remnants of everything one has seen — advertent and inadvertent — consciously and half-consciously on a screen since the time you were born O my bobble-headed baby, from Elvis movies in Panama City to bombs exploding in Baghdad, 1991)

I am quite ready to die. Today would be okay. I might rather live, were there deep incentives, but I swear to you folks, I see none. That which interests me interests no one else and that which interests everyone else is of little interest to me. So, Diogenes, put on some clothes. Crawl out of that four-foot concrete pipe. Kick those mangy dogs out of the way (they only follow you for coprophagic reasons). Meander towards the edge. Go on. Images of your bodiless head will circulate in the noosphere if not forever for a good long while. Video footage will be preserved of the head rolling, the hapless headless body hunting, sightless, whacking into tiny trees as it searches…

— And why should one continue to live when there is no good reason?

• — You have reasons. Did I say I was talking about myself? No, but… Well then. Okay. Fine. Do we have to walk? Can we stop and catch our breaths?* Yeah, sure. Here…

© 2018 Thomas N Dennis