Mr. Quilt's Rotten Luck

On a crooked, cobblestoned and ancient road I briskly strode when two men wearing bowler hats, curled moustaches, all in black, on a tandem bicycle went this way, that way till they fell beneath a coach-and-four.

When I was just six I was rather curious regarding paternity. Just who could my father be? I think he was skeletal. I think he knew mother, well, controversially.

Then some time much later on, during breakfast Aunt Yvonne choked upon a bacon rind. She sang backwards, nearly died. Then there was my friend from school whose dog turned rabid, mad and cruel, and ate his master up.

I would need more fingers than are given upon either hand to count up all the sea-choked screams, calcined whispers, rendered seams, pudgy-pretzled baby limbs, punctured lungs and altered hymns I've seen and heard today...