Tuesday, March 1, 2011

A Small Room in Tripoli

When Fatwick turned forty he busted a chair— 

he leveled his weight and, with nobody there, 
stomped the thin top and splintered the frame; 
only the rope would stymie his fall, the same 
broken thread that coiled in the crash, the same 
foolish prop that besmirched the endgame: 
‘the fatness prevailed once again,’ said the chair, 
which rolled with the groan in the sullen air. 

But Fatwick was hardly a mountainous man; 
he wasn’t real thin or infirm—then again… 
all he assumed in the course of his veins 
made him a ghoul, gnarled hands on the reigns, 
pulling a whelp-ass toward dubious gains. 
Ozymandias of fruitless demesne: 
A colonel of nothing but hourglass sand, 
he wasn’t as fat as his desert command. 
                                                                                   

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