qUEEQUEGIAN tREE-nAILS7*

And the seizures, palpitations, colic, the fill-tilt throttle of a chest endemic with waste. Lung sacs bloated with corpse gas and fennel root. A peppermint sweetie lolled on the wean of the tongue, the curial for whooping, arrhythmia and sleepy-leg. Not for the faint of heart or weepy. He, too, the man in the hat, would become one of these, one of them, a colicky old man with incurable whooping and bird’s talon toe nails, a shamble legged man, a clochard. And they’re toil nails, old people, like split shale browned with nicotine, curled and striated, fucking mercenary indeed. Queequegian tree-nails, pounded into keel wood and jury-mast, and the whooping and sulfa smell, redolent of death and bad grooming, crumble and fester.