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Along the slips and sidings of the mews
The powerful effluvium amuses the few
Who sputter their lives dying against the bars
Hiding and shying from the awful pining which
Drives us all down far and young, sidling
High up among the piss of culture,
Making mulch the milk of pearl-tolling.
As I tap
At the back of the neck
And think, nerveless wreck
That I am, it thuds dull
And would not feel
The rub of rope, the slice of steel,
And would flinch as much as a schooner's wooden hull
On the rocks of wavebroken coasts
As the deadly punch
Of short, sharp shocks, no more than goats
To market, to be stripped of skin
And hung hooves upward
For luck.
Now bead-telling, chaplet beading one's brow,
Brow-beating and useless queues of cutthroat
Hanging, dung gone dreary and sour, within
My heart, my apostrophizing heart, dead
At the tips, slipped beyond the margins of
Sense, into a chill and scald fantasy, foolish and
Pertly flirting with the doubledatebook of death.
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