The Underground Man

the ingredients put me more in mind of gunpowder than any medicine,

even the most patronizing, puffed-up doctors do not escape the earth’s deadly pull.

Such colossal potential in the humble pip!

buried deep within the meat of me my own bone-tree patiently waits.

the gradual revelation of one’s body as nothing more than a bag of unshakeable aches.

no great weeping when I go. I did not even manage to marry the woman I loved

O, how wonderful to be an apple tree – to know one’s place in the world. To be both fixed and fruitful.

trepanation kit.

to find one’s old dreams half alive and shabby-looking when, in truth, one would prefer them dead and six foot underground.