Portrait of My Hat Without My Head

Aloft! What strands over yonder railing hang?
This is the alley, and Mopietta dries in the sun.
Arise fair one, give wind cause to bristle and sigh.
Before utility’s ladder, drainpipe, tuckpoints,
She lends grandeur to pragmat bric-a-brac.
Forsake thy bucket, descend ladder rungs
No more swabbing warehouse floors for thee,
Ground thy handle and pivot floorboards.
Such locks are for centrifuge dance,
Not toiling to crinkled linoleums.
Such a mophead is for gazing windswept seas
Turn thine fair end cut mop head to me
And give cause for these tangled fibers to entwine.

The plan hadn’t been to slip Rusherdord B. Hayes a mickey. But, as they say, once the mickey has been slipped, nothing to be done. The course has its direction. And, after all, the chair has to be filled. That is the point, after all. Select a suitable mark [?] and run the gambit. Gamit? Gambit. If you can, do. They’re waiting, now. When it’s done…

Coarse lips spoke through a hole in the fence.

“Yes, yes. I grant you some difficulty, but where will you be with, ‘It can’t be done?’ Do you want to be the one? Be my guest, sir. Look at the field.” He shifted his head/face to show partial view. “Nothing whatsoever casual about that scene.”

“No.”

“Gruesome. To say the least. Find a body. Somebody well notes.”

“But who?” The man’s scruffy head reeled its gaze up and down the muddied street. His shrugged shoulders repeated the plea.

A pug nosed dog ran out of an alley directly to a lump in the street, then scraping his paw at the ground., lurched back toward the alley. Just then a tall figure turned the corner and abruptly stopped as if seized by a thought. Standing in the center of the sidewalk planks, he stared into the middle distance, stroking his beard. “How odd, exceedingly odd.” A riotous voice was suddenly in his head. Screeching Lucille. It drove all thought from his head. He felt somewhat disoriented.

He opened his eyelids heavily. Before him were men sat in chairs….. —cards lay beneath his hand.

“Well…?”