Betwixt Tumblers and Tonnes

O and how horrible it seems sometimes, when things are a-flickering and blue bars are on the move and it's over into tomorrow. And around you nothing but peeps and in front of you nothing but bobbing cabinets. O and not much but a stream of nothing above a time that's wrong, over in an hour that's been and gone. And on and on, till a sizable lump has grown from an O and ended before the end.

And o-over the things that pile in stacks and are filed away but float away, and rest when the restless are restless no more and faceless and wondering like the rest. Where o-awful things are wording by word and making each other wonder. Why the stooped knee-trodden is rattling the right cage and scooping up the crap that falls. Why the face he makes is inappropriately sculpted and jarring in the very best sense. And when he feels a wind of regret or anticipation, he nets it too, and tags it and cages it as the very best excuse in town. O and he charges the very best people the very steep prices, which leave the fakers at the roots and finds the successful weary at the peak.

And though it feels wrong in aspect it's from a boy who lost the verve, and wants it back and wonders if he ever had it. So the admitting comes fast and thick and phrases flow but none of them stick, and he as an entity of whatever is left falling over himself until he's picked up on and left. O and then he'll grow and he'll wonder some more. Why he couldn't be much of anything in anything and why he tried. Why the manuscript repeats the word Forest for days on end.

Then o-o-another time will pass and apologies will be fed to the forgetful unwanting from a postman's lovely bag. And he'll still be left to wonder and a-wonder why no reply was forthcoming from a healthy communiqué. No doubt was overtaken and forgotten in the slightest by the federal rover in silly knee-high ivory nails. Who had a crisis of fate and welled a wish upon a star in a half-dead act. O accidents happen all the unsuspecting.

And in his beard he'll wonder too who became of the other one on resentful slopes. Who seemed to lay claim to any of the worth that he's long since put to waste. O and who it was who was destined to never be known. And he can picture himself waking up to their shoulders and storing the veil in a box somewhere unspecified. Like he can picture himself with half the world.

O and a-wondering and a-knowing the very reactions from the few, who look like their ears are bursting and their souls are spent. And one in very particular who abhors every bar and has lost the rival who fed his survival and lives in a car. And who is destined for floor-shows and microphones and dying Labradors. Who has just witnessed adolescence expelled upon a screen and left uncleaned for fifty days.

He knows the very diseases that will plague him tomorrow and the next. He knows the very cures but can't build enough of that party stuff to pay off the chemist and the like. And o-he knows of the things he was aiming for. The pipes in the clouds that could clean the very best expositions, and wipe the smiles off hundreds of rotting politicians in Dorsett Alley.

And over they tumble like wheels of lead, never getting any clearer or nearer his goal. Soil from his well-off roots have stained the carpets from his boots, and branded o-his every move, from valuable creeks to small bakeries.

O o-they end with the usual whimper, and he wonders who's coming to dinner. Over frosty packets and heaped dishes, he studies the guides and plans the rest of his night. O and it ends with nothing but nothing over the horizon.