<!DOCTYPE html> <!-- AUTOCENTO OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE --> <!-- vim: fdm=indent --> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta name="generator" content="pandoc"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes"> <meta name="author" content="Case Duckworth"> <title>Last bastion | Autocento of the breakfast table</title> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="trunk/favico.png" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="trunk/style.css"> <script src="scripts/randomize.js" type="text/javascript"> </script> <script src="scripts/hylo.js" type="text/javascript"> </script> <!--[if lt IE 9]> <script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"> </script> <![endif]--> </head> <body id="last-bastion" class="stark"> <article class="container"> <header> <!-- title --> <h1 class="title">Last bastion</h1> <div class="header-extra"> </div> </header> <section class="content verse"> <p><span class="line">Dimly remembered celebrity chefs shuffle</span><span class="line">down the cold and darkened highways of the heart.</span><span class="line">They are the last personality left. They are the meek</span><span class="line"><a href="http://biblehub.com/matthew/5-5.htm">who inherited the heart</a>, what was left of it.</span></p> <p><span class="line">Without food to cook in new or exciting ways</span><span class="line">nor audience to gasp and cackle, the chefs</span><span class="line">of the heart quietly waste away while staring</span><span class="line">doe-eyed into now-empty Safeway windows</span><span class="line">checking under the dusty produce shelves</span><span class="line">for something they pray the <a href="in-bed.html">rats</a> haven’t found yet.</span></p> <p><span class="line">Years ago, the economy of the heart boomed</span><span class="line">and there was food everywhere. Produce</span><span class="line">piled high in pyramids of devotion, meat in</span><span class="line">gilded glass cases opulent under fluorescence,</span><span class="line">dairy which ran like the <a href="music-433.html">mythical river</a> toward</span><span class="line">cereals hot and cold. Under it all, thrumming</span><span class="line">like great stone wheels on sand under a hot sun</span><span class="line">near a river where reeds sang in the wind</span><span class="line">the heart produced and gave reward for hard labor.</span></p> <p><span class="line">No one knows when it all ended. No one can say</span><span class="line">if it was the heart that dried up or the heart’s supply.</span><span class="line">Either way, food of the heart became scarcer and scarcer.</span><span class="line">People began dying, not of starvation</span><span class="line">but of a certain facial expression that could only</span><span class="line">be described as desperation. Now</span><span class="line">all that are left are the celebrity chefs, last bastion</span><span class="line">of a once mighty empire of the heart</span><span class="line"><a href="sense-of-it.html">are reduced to husks</a> blown dry by wind.</span></p> </section> </article> <a id="textlink" title="Source file" href="text/last-bastion.txt">¶</a> <nav> <div class="anchors"> <a href="backlinks/last-bastion.html" id="backlinks" title="Links to this page"> φ </a> <a href="index.html" id="coverlink" title="To cover">◊</a> <a href="#" id="randomizelink" title="ERROR">ξ</a> </div> <a class="prevlink" href="sixteenth-chapel.txt.html" title="Previous article in Stark Raving"> The Sixteenth Chapel </a> <a class="prevlink" href="boy_bus.html" title="Previous article in Stark Raving"> Boy on the bus </a> <a class="nextlink" href="amber-alert.html" title="Next article in Stark Raving"> AMBER alert </a> <a class="nextlink" href="initial-conditions.html" title="Next article in Stark Raving"> Initial conditions </a> </nav> </body> </html>