the memory of a laugh. The Purple Onion only causes perplexion like Charlie Brown's Great Pumpkin. Forget about words like "catalyst". Lennon was the conflageration. Graffiti after him has renewed licence. 76, 77 Back to the Contents Page 

 

PROGROM

There is an unhurried resemblance to pain, here, this Fiddler on the Roof commodity, potables, fine oaken chest for one and furs; but wait, the Czarist police are busting up the place -- a program is having its desired effect on our emotions, the wine cellar smashed as tears are falling like bloody heaps in the red snow, cuttersleds carting off the sundry feelings we've invested in, a relationship already staledated two years old. 78 Back to the Contents Page 

 

BRAGGADOCIO

Chess playing Death -- no, the reverse Death sitting decked out and self-satisfied in black no mandatory top hat but a shroud shouldering a cowl. There stereotypes end -- appearances have to be kept up tho' hardly any cinematic gnarled fingers of Baron Samedi fame rather pudgy digitals reflecting gentile prosperity (after all, Winners do take all his fellow satanists bank on it).  Of course, such things are fictitious. Death plays no favourites (and waits for no man when rivalling Time). Still, parlour games are one indulgence. Hardly comforting to know human beings function at one purpose when this Hallow of Hallows puts on the smirk. Dalliance with the victim is the upshot -- the chess motif again. Sift thru the chicken bones a mite -- let the chump stir the rubble of his dreams. Something of gallow's humour or gangster largesse. Offer a stiff drink (brandy will do), one last cigarette. Then, too, for beaten gladiators toiling bravely the apparent rewards accelerate. Truckloads of flowers at the funeral, for instance. Preferential treatment for the guise or mercy must be kept up. All lies in appearances. Prepare the feast. Sit the guest of honour on a splendid cushion, then serve up dish after sumptious dish. Dining splendidly on one's own children unbeknownst is a favourite -- maddens the victim no end. Brief success turning to bitter sawdust is the supreme moment of ecstasy. Serves precisely as metaphoric extension of all earthly reward as illusionary. (A delicious ruse borrowed shamelessly from fellow representatives on Earth --the Sicilian Mafia.) Further spin-offs centre about the Absurd But spare us juvenile intrigue with petty omens like a bird loose in the house. Rather, a swift check-mate served up in the best Grandmaster tradition is more 

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