once again for emphasis | the only book you'll never need

"I was hungry for words, the anarchist typography of dub..." - ib

The first paragraph had no legs. It fell out my mouth sideways on a stutter, a wad of phlegm gathering in the crotch of a paraplegic with a tic.
     The black dog was busy licking its balls. Under my bed. The sofa. I got up and kicked it two thirds unconscious.
     A thin stream of snot issued from its snout.
     It was only about two inches tall, the cunt, a ball of wool with broken kirby grips for limbs. Much like the rest of us, it was destined for a bad end. I nudged it onto the fringe of the rug and coughed again for emphasis.
     "See you, you little shite," I snarled. The ghost of Hector Nicol eating up the consonants, my teeth not in yet, an old woman's shawl at the shoulders.
     A truck out front dropped its gate and with it several lengths of scaffolding.
     Someone howled. The scream of a child forced out of forty-year-old lungs. It looked like it might turn out to be a fine day after all.
      "Heh." I went.
      The clock winced where I left it wound up on its shelf. I ground the heel of my good foot on that soft part of the mutt. A tiny watermelon sprang a leak.
     The first paragraph of the morning is often wasted on the cheap seats. A premature ejaculation.
     If you have never lived in Paisley, you will not appreciate the irony.
     The middle class on its uppers, scribblers in Edinburgh in the main, do their best to disguise it as writer's block. One off the wrist.
     The small minded will often try to collect it in a handkerchief before disposing of it politely.
     Well. What they dismiss as wank we bottle as an aperitif.
     Where there is muck there is brass, and where there is brass there are monkeys smashing cymbals. Anarchy around the corner.
     I am nothing if not a kindly old soul. I like to think of myself as genteel in my dotage.
     If you are shrewd you might forgive my shortcomings.
     Just like Alan Ladd I need a box to step up on to reach a measure of myself. A splash of colour in those freckles diving between a sweetheart's breasts.
     The mutt stirred. Writhed.
     I shook one toe at it.
     Its head snuck back beneath its paw. Its hindquarters shivered. The tail, tragic, bruised - a choirboy wizard's busted wand - entirely gave up the ghost.
     Gingerly, I picked it up. Popped its backbone between two fingers.