He had a snake-charmer’s tan bulwarked into the posterior lobes of his skull. The man in the hat espied Orofino from across the street standing cocksfoot, his cap held aloft, brim-side out. The first time he espied Orofino was behind Didier’s grocery after a rather ruthless cockfight in 1979. Neither man had a hat, though the man in the hat had one in a hatbox under his arm tied with string and ribbon. Orofino, Orofino cocksfoot: posterior lobe aloft brim-side out. The man in the hat sat across from Orofino, a fiery red cockscomb leaping and jumping in circles, talons like penknives. Cockfighting is merciless, feathers and chicken fat and the Mexican hollering at the top of his lungs, ‘kill, kill, scratch, scratch!’ It’s a fucking butchery, an abattoir on wheels. Miserable how a man can get so riled up and red-faced over two chickens scratching each others eyes out; fucking pathetic and miserable. Cock Robin in a cloak and dagger, such a shame, a shame indeed.
A coaldigger’s cold morning, the shamble leg man shimmying from side to side, his feet fit to be quartered, a crescent moon hung hanging in the coaldigger’s cold sky. Cigarette paper leaves stained nicotine brown, yellow, the advent of death and wither. In decay and perish, such life and advent, an august autumn, the time of fester and blain. The alms woman stoked her alms-cup beneath her skirts and ambled the sideways; the harridan, busy rearranging a nosegay of peonies and daffodils let out a wailing wail, feet shuffling under the barrows of her go-round. They met at the Piazza del Tornado one hot, very hot Sunday afternoon, afternoon in July 1979. She was dressed in a gabardine jumpsuit and he in a cashmere sweater made from organic sheep’s wool. They spoke in Esperanto and Gaelic, neither one understanding the other, gibbered and gibbered and willowed. Sometimes it’s the voice that doesn’t speak that speaks the loudest, a child’s whisper, a dog’s howl, ‘scratch, scratch, kill, kill, out with its eyes, faster, faster; kill, kill!’ The man in the hat lived in a world where charnel appetites existed at a distance, where they couldn’t be mistaken for real things and places, in a world of make-believe and trickery.
He drank Mescal and tic-tac; the smell of wormwood and chattel-sticks. The legless man skirted across the blacktop, the staves of his feet anchored to the corset of his ankles, blood-blistered raw. ‘These are small times, small times indeed’ said the shamble leg man. ‘Not a moments rest for the weary, nary a one’. He slid back out from under the Waymart weigh-door and heeled it up the sideways, a skid of jujubes, black and red, red and black, tucked up under his favourite shirt, the red and black, black and red chequered one. ‘Lord have mercy on my mole’ he shouted, ‘and then some.’ Robbing the Waymart caused him no end of worry, as did wearing mismatched socks or going to temple on Thursdays. He, the shamble leg man he, felt that being a nuisance or a blockhead were forms of contrition for sins committed, yet to be committed and never to be sinned or committed at all. Sins, after all, were funny amusing things; things without cause or effect; causally inexcusable things which were neither things nor not-things, but thingy things, those things that never quite make it as things, but pretend to be things regardless. ‘God have Percy on my bowl’ he hollered at the tiptop of his lungs, ‘and then sun’. The shamble leg man fell, kersplat! jujubes, red and black, black and red, tumbling like bayoneted soldiers onto the asphalt ahead of him. He doffed his cap and sped in the opposite direction, feet shambling and shimmying, the alms woman hollering behind him ‘jujubes, red and black, black and red, oh dear what a sight indeed’. In his haste to make a clean getaway he’d forgotten his lever-bar in the Waymart weigh-door lock.
Marmalade compote on seedless rye, weigh-bar bar stuck in the Waymart lock, end of story. He doffed his cap saying ‘algebra isn’t about numbers, but squiggles and darts, a countenance whereby the waybill remains hidden in the vectored vector; adman and may clods bless’. Such began the begetting, daylight and then some.
A coaldigger’s cold morning, the shamble leg man shimmying from side to side, his feet fit to be quartered, a crescent moon hung hanging in the coaldigger’s cold sky. Cigarette paper leaves stained nicotine brown, yellow, the advent of death and wither. In decay and perish, such life and advent, an august autumn, the time of fester and blain. The alms woman stoked her alms-cup beneath her skirts and ambled the sideways; the harridan, busy rearranging a nosegay of peonies and daffodils let out a wailing wail, feet shuffling under the barrows of her go-round. They met at the Piazza del Tornado one hot, very hot Sunday afternoon, afternoon in July 1979. She was dressed in a gabardine jumpsuit and he in a cashmere sweater made from organic sheep’s wool. They spoke in Esperanto and Gaelic, neither one understanding the other, gibbered and gibbered and willowed. Sometimes it’s the voice that doesn’t speak that speaks the loudest, a child’s whisper, a dog’s howl, ‘scratch, scratch, kill, kill, out with its eyes, faster, faster; kill, kill!’ The man in the hat lived in a world where charnel appetites existed at a distance, where they couldn’t be mistaken for real things and places, in a world of make-believe and trickery.
He drank Mescal and tic-tac; the smell of wormwood and chattel-sticks. The legless man skirted across the blacktop, the staves of his feet anchored to the corset of his ankles, blood-blistered raw. ‘These are small times, small times indeed’ said the shamble leg man. ‘Not a moments rest for the weary, nary a one’. He slid back out from under the Waymart weigh-door and heeled it up the sideways, a skid of jujubes, black and red, red and black, tucked up under his favourite shirt, the red and black, black and red chequered one. ‘Lord have mercy on my mole’ he shouted, ‘and then some.’ Robbing the Waymart caused him no end of worry, as did wearing mismatched socks or going to temple on Thursdays. He, the shamble leg man he, felt that being a nuisance or a blockhead were forms of contrition for sins committed, yet to be committed and never to be sinned or committed at all. Sins, after all, were funny amusing things; things without cause or effect; causally inexcusable things which were neither things nor not-things, but thingy things, those things that never quite make it as things, but pretend to be things regardless. ‘God have Percy on my bowl’ he hollered at the tiptop of his lungs, ‘and then sun’. The shamble leg man fell, kersplat! jujubes, red and black, black and red, tumbling like bayoneted soldiers onto the asphalt ahead of him. He doffed his cap and sped in the opposite direction, feet shambling and shimmying, the alms woman hollering behind him ‘jujubes, red and black, black and red, oh dear what a sight indeed’. In his haste to make a clean getaway he’d forgotten his lever-bar in the Waymart weigh-door lock.
Marmalade compote on seedless rye, weigh-bar bar stuck in the Waymart lock, end of story. He doffed his cap saying ‘algebra isn’t about numbers, but squiggles and darts, a countenance whereby the waybill remains hidden in the vectored vector; adman and may clods bless’. Such began the begetting, daylight and then some.
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