And so, ever
forward!—or rather, charging defiant-
ly toward
whichever cardinal
direction he deemed the most
frontward at the moment
to the lily pink
insides of his
irrespective guts
(which he fed
intermittently, when he felt
it made sense, by the way)—
with this!
the very same apocryphal
instrument in question:
a tarnished—but
an impudent! little irreligious
ark of a spoon;
now bent from stiff use, and cupped
just enough
to shuffle—
such trifling amounts—of livid dust
and foul
ancient dirt around
as to give his surrounding walls
little cavities! and a very odd
resemblance to Swiss cheese.
And—all the while, it's been
said, never intending
to use the resulting tunnels
to rifle
his crusty
way out of the place someday;
rather, his gambit!
seems to have been
simply
to grow old—
and do so gracefully,
while the whole dismal
prison! he'd been
living in
since god-only-
knows-when—softly moaned
and shrugged
and eventually just
collapsed—
from in-
stability.
