Man in a bottle

There’s a man trapped inside a bottle He can’t breathe, can’t move One eye is bulging out, pressed against the bottle’s neck Thick glass narrowing further, vice-like, around his brow Force-fed veal calf constricted Oh God! Do I smash it with a hammer to let him out? – he might think I’m trying to kill him How on earth did he get his body in there? Was it like the way they make Serbian Pear Brandy? Where a bottle is tied round the end of each budding branch allowing a perfect pear to grow inside? Was it an old empty? Washed ashore from years bobbing the surface of the ocean? Perhaps he stuck his fingers in to prize out the message, and starting with the arm, got slowly sucked in? Was it like the intricate ships, collapsed paper models that spring erect once inserted? A magic trick gone wrong? The retaliatory spell of a sorceress scorned? Maybe it’s an art installation about the conversion of information space: analogue to digital, standard to metric, mind over quantum matter? I can’t hear a word he’s to saying, too suffocated, muffled and faint. Mine is not to question why. I can’t set him free. Best I walk away, incase someone passes by, and thinks I put him in there