You’ll be a gargoyle soon

They said, five hundred years, mate, and we gonna make you a gargoyle. Everyone has to start somewhere, and the entrance lion job ain’t that bad.

Stand guard in front of the City Council, they promised, for five hundred years, and – bang! – next thing you know you are up there, watching the roofs, bathing in the wind. Great view, and the right to snatch some dumb pigeon off the cornice after sunset. Perks for high-flyers, y’know.

They didn’t tell me the last two hundred years would be a touristic nightmare.

It was more or less fine before the two-legged invented photography. Lemme snap one goddamn tourist with a camera, and I’ll stand a hundred years more! My teeth ache and crrrrrumble ’cause I don’t use’em as I should. And the bastards keep taking pictures of my useless jaws.

Hey, you, to the left of me! I can see you, periferrrrrally. I’ll have your face catalogued.

Big bosses say, no, ye can’t have tourists. Not even after dark. The gargoyle promotion is only for the lions who’ve shown endurance. Then you can command pigeons to shit on idiots with telescopic lens. Not until then. Blast!

I’m having absurd dreams lately. I think too much of the gargoyle job, I guess. Sometimes I imagine myself a stork watching the ocean.

Y’know my problem? I never fly. I dream of flying, but I can only conjure up a bird that shows off endurance. Sometimes, I am just standing there on one leg, like that French mime by Uffizi. Except that I am a bird.

It’s an evil loop. I think gargoyles are more like birds with a shitload of endurance and I keep dreaming of birds standing like guards at Buckingham Palace. We had a mime here that mocked it up on the piazza fifty years ago. I need a re-training. Or a shrink. I asked if Michelangelo was available for counsel, but my HR boss said he only handles serious stuff, like Dissociative Identity Disorder. Yeah, that’s multiple personality. David has a huge problem with that ’cause he’s here, in front of the Palazzo, and in the Art Academy at the same time. Mickey’s full-time on that case, so they offered me an anger management course by Savonarola.

I remember the guy. He was burning books right here on the piazza. He’s nuts, totally. He needs my councel on endurace instead.

Hey, dude, where are you going? Wait! Don’t go! We may not have had a good start, but I’ve come to like you, sort of. No-no-no-no! Stay for a coupla’ years more, at least!

I’ll tell you the joke Da Vinci made up about Medici! I’ll tell you who Mona Lisa really was!

Gone.

Bastarrrrrrrrrrrrrrd!