Diacope (di-a’-co-pee): Repetition of a word with one or more between, usually to express deep feeling.
“Give me a dollar. Give me a dollar now! A dollar in my hand! A dollar! Come on, dickhead!” I was a street person. I was totally unsuccessful at getting money from people. They would tell me to back off or get lost, or take a shower, or go back to the halfway house—that sort of thing. Sometimes they’d hold up their stuffed wallet and taunt me with it.
I had a deep philosophical commitment to living on the streets. Well, it was more than that. I was raised in a series of refrigerator boxes in back alleys. My father died of food poisoning when he was 38. My mother never remarried. She said “the single life” was more fun. We had a smaller auxiliary box that I would sleep in when she brought her men “home.” I was about ten feet up the alley and put cigarette filters in my ears to block out the sounds. One morning I went to wake her up and she was laying on her back, dead. She had a vegetable baggie from the supermarket pulled over he head. That’s when I became chronically angry. That’s when my income plummeted—I became rude when asking for handouts.
The State of New York had recently instituted a group anger management program for street people. It was hoped that it would “mellow out” the streets. There were a lot of angry street people. We met in vacant lots in our respective cities. I was located in Rochester. Our vacant lot was for sale to be developed as a parking lot. The sessions ran from May first to July fifth. We learned special “polite” begging strategies. For example, we got down on one knee and would say “Kind sir, may I induce you to part with one George Washington?” Or, “Sir. Life is fleeting and my hunger overwhelms me. Will you gift me a dollar so I may quell my hunger?” We recite the begging words together in class, filling the vacant lot with the sound of need, not greed.
We graduated in quite an elaborate ceremony. All of Rochester’s big shots were there, including the mayor. He came over to me and we shook hands. I asked him for a dollar with one of my new routines. He asked me who the hell I thought he was—he’s the Mayor and Mayor’s don’t give money to bums. I punched him in the jaw and knocked him to the ground. I was arrested and was put in jail for ten days. I repurposed my money begging sayings into cigarette begging sayings. It worked really well on my fellow prisoners. I left jail with a small bag of cigarettes.
Now that I’m back on the streets I mug people outside of hotels. I stick a gun in their ribs and say, for example, “Would you please be so kind as to give me your wallet? I have bills to pay.”
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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