Poets and Kings

I was just sitting here minding my business when my tin foil hat received a strange coded message.

Briley, who listed a female lobbyist who is not his wife as his emergency contact when he was arrested, then issued an enigmatic "coded message" to someone out there listening to his speech.

"I'm going to say something in code now that none of you all are going to understand," Briley said. "Poets and kings."

When that message was met with blank stares, Briley elaborated. "There's something out there that poets write verse about, and something out there that kings wage war about," he said. "I've been lucky enough to experience that in my life, and I hope all of you do, too. So, poets and kings, everybody."

Being the responsible blogger I am, I had to figure out what he was talking about. The only thing Google returned for "Poets and Kings," cops and speaking in tongues was this Gordon Lightfoot song "If I Could."

If I could sing like the poets and kings of this world
If I could rise like the wind or the tides of the sea
I would sing you to sleep my love with sweet melody
And let you dream away till the morning light returned again
To take you away from me
If I could speak with the tongues of the masters of old
If I could tame all the fleeting perceptions I hold
Would I stand in the marketplace before
To be shouted down without any warning at all, to be stood by the wall
And shot by the man in blue

Who knows if Rep. Rob Briley was referring to this. He won't say. We're not on speaking terms anymore. But Briley did beg to be shot by the man in blue, or "Nazi brown shirts" as he called them, on September 8, 2007 at 5:07:03p.m.

"Take me out in the f**king woods and shoot me in the fu**ing head."

He might as well muttered "Rosebud."