About Nothing

The man who ate himself ended up with a terrible stomach ache.

The bones gathered themselves and, together with the yellowing teeth that had gnawn them bare, rattled off like soldiers on parade into the whirring, juddering disposal system - and ground themselves to nothing along with the spinning, spluttering, splintering rotor-blades that snarled up on their own exifugal machinations.

Armies of sparks marched up the back of the black chimney of night. Wild scintillations of smouldering bone and molten flakes of steel roared into an endless funnel of emptiness.

There was, then, utter silence - except for the almost indistinguishable hissing of an indigestion tablet.


(published 'Inkshed' 1988)