When I mentioned how good the succotash was,

Neil died of complications.

If you recall, telephone’s the game

where you whisper a phrase or sentence

into someone’s ear, and they whisper

what they understand you to have said

to the next person in the line, and so on

and so on until everything’s fucked up.

None of that was very helpful for Neil,

but it explains why Andreas looked up hopefully

and said “The supple grasses played Monopoly

har har he organized your flibberty-gibbet.”

When I said “Now there’s a capital idea,”

everyone but Neil agreed. Neil had other

ideas from which no capital ones had managed

to escape, if we were to believe Neil.

Can I tell you how difficult it is to get people

to believe a dead person? Talk about complications.

If you were a dead person, you wouldn’t believe

me either. And who would eat your vegetables?

When someone whispers in your ear, you’d better

listen carefully. Neil says to pass it on.