kyphosis/hunchback--basket of abandon, made
stronger than a dozen shadows of men.
mustachio bushel eyebrow covering his left eye,
a bloaty flap of toad-warts covering his
right eye.
palsied arms clamped at his sides--like a chick's
wings embossed in yolk, draggy right foot trailing him.
Quasimodo: 'half made'--to swing from thickly fibrous
ropes & land on musty planks.
swinging/sliding/climbing, up & down, man to creature--
creature to man...in the attic of housed worship.
made deaf by the struck-unstruck sounds of Notre Dame's
bells, cathedral that gave him ears to hear.
of which he named each, each a heroine of the belltower.
made King of Fools by the townspeople during festivity--
crowned & propped up on a third-hand thrown.
stealing away a crowd throwing currency in a gypsy
goddess' tambourine: Esmerelda, whose proceeds went
to the: King of Thieves.
not long after Quasimodo/Hunchback is accosted with
rotted vegetables by the townspeople as he's led to the
public square.
after blindly following orders to abduct a certain gypsy
by the archdeacon.
where he's bound to a rotating pillory & flogged thirty times.
Esmeralda mounts the pillory and pours water from a leathery
flask into his mouth, as he called for it crooked-faced, the jutting
topples of sparse--but hard in the yellow of teeth.
amid bloodlust catcalls that already drenched the pasture-green
rags of his shirt.
his surrogate Father, archdeacon: Claude Frollo, the one that
first reached into a basket to coddle abandonment--as to invest
in afterworld treasures...rebreaks the bones of fifteenth century
sacrilege into covetous place.
whose unanesthetized voices escape from the mouths of Quasimodo
& Esmeralda.
whom the Hunchback rescued from the gallows, citing sanctuary
by church decree, after being falsely accused of murdering
Captain Phoebus.
a philandering standby of integrity, that saw Esmeralda's
eyes follow & fall for the span of his sword, all the wooded
babes of her marital hopes--dashed.
followed up by the sped blackening of the archdeacon's
hooded robe, ripping open the door of jealousy he spied thru.
an almost unbroken motion of forced entry, & ****** of blade
into Captain Phoebus' back--though the ***** survived the *****.
this active underbelly could withhold no more the fat of
a pig on a spit, so after several **** attempts on Esmeralda--
the "bewitched" archdeacon: Claude Frollo, was impaled by
a nail like a renounced garment by Quasimodo, and left to moths.
he loved Esmeralda as he hid his face from her in their brief
interchanges, with the rests of a pianist absorbing unplayable keys.
along with the gargoyle that spat fire from the belltower to ensure
her escape into the arms of her true love: Piere, a poet.
along the underground torches of safe passage, Esmeralda &
Piere, followed Quasimodo's secret instruction...as they were seen
to sunset.
as the king's army closed in on: The Hunchback of Notre Dame, he
clung to his stony confidant--a gargoyle.
where the pale stories of dawn climbed the cathedral, Quasimodo
clung to the gargoyle's head, where he was talked way down.