Bats

What is a bat if it is not a meat moth having a fit under the moon; if it is not a small furred contraption on the verge of going unhinged?

Indeed a bat is a haunted rubber toy dancing to a strobe light; it is Hecate’s own hand-puppet.

Bats are defiantly stuck in the 80s, as you know. Their ears are physiologically incapable of registering names like Britney, Gaga, Kanye. “Who?”

They burst from the hollowed trunks of long-dead trees like text messages sent from the cell phones of Hell.

Will the iPhone 15 be able to decipher these floppy hissing missives? The iPhone 20?

“Look forward 2 seeing u. Sooner than u think. ;) Alison”

No, your Mother can never, neither can your anxiety-disordered Aunt, nor your little sister Carrie when she found the severed gopher’s head in her lunch box--none can shriek more piercingly than the smallest bat.

Was denkst du, Fledermausmann? Müssen wir noch Heidegger lesen?

(As a teen I dreamed such dreams, and if only I had such courage now, I would fulfill these dreams: A one-room museum displaying only the cleaned and mounted jaws of the various bat species, under each jaw a photo of the bat and a sonnet in its honor.)

A bat is a mole in a manic episode. A mole is a depressed bat.

Bats hang while they sleep upside down. Bats sleep while they hang upside down. Bats hang upside down while they sleep.

Sentence 3 is the best.

And you, Kay Thiesenhusen, where are you now?

This and 42 other important public service announcements can be found in my book Idiocy, Ltd.