Oh, K: Thirteen Ways of Looking at This Letter
by Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker
K crashes in, kicking keisters to Kingdom Come, then kneels and wheels away, a silent knight vanishing with a final wink.
K's klaxon sounds, calling an echo from CH.
Kafka kidnapped K and held it hostage for decades. Well, who wouldn't?
Stuck in the swastika, cloaked in khaki, here comes K the fascist, the Nazi. its hells click. Look at the saluting goosestepper in profile, the Ku Klux Klan on parade. Bully K seeks out hard Cs to replace, as in Amerika (Kafka co-opted). With a single flick, K ejects the Republic and erects the Reich.
Oh, K, can you C? No, not in English, anyway. Go talk to S.
K flickers, a visible incognito, a face card turning from Jack to Knave and back.
Awkward as a coat hanger, K elbows its way into the middle of the alphabet; then it turns its back on J (the nerve! and such a noble letter, too) to grab innocent L at arms' length to keep its distance from the frou-frou frivolity of tickle and fickle, tinkle and twinkle.
When K falls for kitsch, C better watch out, because here comes a cascade of kaka: kiddie korrals, koffee korners, karma kameleons, and even kuter (stop!) crap. Kitsch thinks there's a shortcut to wit, but Kundera’s got its number: "Kitsch is the absolute denial of shit."
You can still feel the tongue of K in knurl, and knuckles rubs the brain.
German fairly bristles with Ks, including weighty words like kunst and kopf. In the late Thirties Krupp, anticipating the demands the coming war would make on printing, set aside an entire division casting Ks for printers, typesetting machines, and new highway signage. ("I'm Karl, I work in Italics. And you?" "I think you're making this whole thing up.")
K bears the weight of kiss and kill, of key and kind,
joke, fuck, look and luck,
knots and knowledge, think and link,
quick and funk and quirk and quark.
K is so cool it shoulda been kool since day one.
Q pairs up with K lots of times, most often at opposite ends of a word, as they form brackets for an ever-changing stream of vowels and Cs, of Ns and Rs. Here they talk over that parade of letters, usually about their respective remorae, U and C:
Q: They say I'd sound like you if we got rid of that U. As if I don't anyway. But what about opaque? or plaque? Does she have to be around all the time?
K: I know. I often catch C yawning behind my back. See? he's got no work to do for back or crock or stack, after all; but they say dropping C would make the words ugly. Too stark.
Q: You do make a cute couple.
K: Quiet -- N will hear you.