Prose sketch of the dyspeptic roustabout -- by Russell Block
The rings of feuillage have blistered light at the rime again, of another season, my sack pants laid away and fine tailoring changed for my pre-prandial. Along the boulevards, I parade through calls of names, to which I turn, I hardly knew for long enough, although the terms could not have been more in my favor. If nothing can be now, the lesson remains withering, from whence the touch of love went to the lives they call still; and even the woman who had been a neighborly crib-mate only saw the call of names and nothing clear through to me. Lingeringly, for a private purpose, a letter spins itself along a spoon, the cream they had ballooned to wreath and streak a laurel into heartening a T. I can tell that to scoop the cream leads to curling lips toward the end, arisen in the wake of bitter silt, that would reclaim the mug from me.
I do nothing more than take the world upon my shoulder. My heroic lineage of other sabered pacifists, of the emaciated king, and the libertine who could never do more than test the handle of his cellar door, a prison that he never gained the exit of, their confluence inspires a considerable mockery to the subtler insignificance grown in me. A young librettist caters his latest manuscript to me, as though the voiceless would now to ledgers peep. Or that, continuing the sale, my connections on the stage would to the orchestra and opera house curry a kind of favor for him while I spoon up my peas. My best advice for the youngster would be a blow from my cane I so often dodged in groveling. Upon the head of my first great success, my thieving acrobat, it never fell, but passed away, by choreography, without connecting. So with a finger pressed to silence I crawled on fours hurriedly across boards. To the howl of the audience, it was daring everything, and the pathos went straight to the experience they left off with their entry, a time for them a ticket could afford. Imagine if I too had been spared the blows. For my advice, this assistance deserves a fatal delivery, for I know no generosity had been extended me. Smiling and exchange of handshakes are not enough teeth to grind one’s self a key, but it is always better to buy a cashbox with a slit and several locks than to bleed into a document. The waiters let me off with the young man gone supine before the arrival of authorities. My theatre has made cruelty of life, and I have gained its seat, a certain advantaged celebrity for having survived the same dodges my rentiers offered me.
My most intense desire to leave the scene hunches me over. It turns me into an unrecognizable quasi-modo that lurches a worse purpose through the same shadow of Notre Dame until, within my blanket’s shade, I train with sheep the logic of eating organs and listening to a row, which whistling, are strewn across the sandy bank the severed heads of fish whose offal nakedly hums about me in the stream. I learned to never criticize a captor to whom I had contracted myself and risked, and me in my most dismal states; I took to training the painless aerobics of sleep when, through all, dreamy and easy, in defiance to years of disadvantage, I would surmount them each. Once then, did I myself swim for generousness? Or, are dreams too resigned in memory, the fledglings quickest cudgeled by a system and her faithless routines? They call me names, but where am I what I really have become? Outside a balustrade, the city too enflamed, sprawled in agony against itself, wonders on the verge of rest from what quarters the good should hold quicker than my fingers could close a grip on sanity.
