Alex Noble, “Shamble”

“Shamble”
by Alex Noble

“These are the broken ones, the abandoned, the deserted, the dispirited, the downtrodden. These are the denizens of the new Wasteland. Da Da Damyata, as the thunder said. These are the ones for whom the bell tolls, for whom April is the cruelest month. These are the ones who can’t go home again, a lost generation of wounded warriors and lives gone wrong somewhere, somehow.

You would never know, looking at the glitz and glitter of Las Vegas, up there on the desert, maybe only 50 feet over their heads, you would never know that a whole secret city of lost souls shuffles and shambles about down there in the storm drains, sleeps on cardboard, huddles by small, flickering fires. And when there is a flash flood, and the rain water races through the underground system of tunnels, some of them are simply too old, or too weak, or too lazy, or too sick, or too apathetic to resist a watery death.

Da. Da. Damyata.  These are the hollow men.

When the hot unrelenting sun melts down over the western hills, and the slot machines crank up and the casinos hum with the prayers of the desperate ones, these citizens of the deep dark bowels of the city creep, and limp, and slowly come up for air into the night, and wander off to search the dumpsters of the gigantic hotels for food, scraps, edible garbage, hoping for perhaps a watermelon, or a loaf of French bread, or perhaps carrots, thrown away in an orgy of waste from the big name kitchens with their celebrity chefs.

Da. Da. Damyata. This is the new Wasteland.

And perhaps they will find some treasure of food, enough to make it through the night, and they hold their findings close to their tattered clothes, and slowly, painfully shuffle and shamble  their way back into the underworld from which they crept.  They walk slowly. These are the broken ones, the abandoned, the deserted, the dispirited, the downtrodden. These are the one for whom the bell tolls, for whom every month is the cruelest month."
․

"Da. Da. Damyata."

"Da. Da.”

- http://alexnoble.typepad.com/postcards/

Share this post