The Book of Kale

These are the tomes of Einer der nichts merkte, the book of kale and celery-root, the recipe for madness and corker’s stem. A slight-of-hand-me-downs handed down from the fader to the son, the unholy sacrosanct; written on desiccated rice paper and the finest fine velum. Madness is madness any way you slice it, parsing out spore and scat like common fodder. The shamble leg man found the tomes of Einer der nichts merkte in the dustbin behind the Waymart next to the aqueduct across from a dead tree that sat upright next to a green bench in the park where the dustbin-men ate they’re lunch on the one day that week it rained, a mad corker’s rain, so he recalled. He thought he’d discovered the Book of Kale, rain or no rain, a book of great importance and principle. He thumbed through it, taking precaution not to dog-ear the pages, even though the rain had softened the spine and separated the backing from the leaf-jacket, then placed it in his rucksack. He decided after a few moments deliberation, during which he watched the dustbin-men eat they’re lunch, that the book was unreadable, the rain having bled the ink like a whore’s mascara, so he’d dry it out on the clothesline he’d jerry-jigged in his bed-sit and use the pages to roll-his-own with. As he’d used up his Bible, the one his great grandmother had given him on his confirmation, he was in the market for roll-your-own paper.