NaPoWriMo #9 - A Mission

Prompt:
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to:

    * Use at least twelve words from this list: flap, winter, torch, pail, jug, strum, lever, massage, octopus, marionette, stow, pumice, rug, jam, limp, campfire, startle, wattle, bruise, chimney, tome, talon, fringe, walker;
    * Include something that tastes terrible;
    * Include some part (from a few words to several lines) of a previous poem that didn’t quite pan out; and
    * Include a sound that makes you happy.
---
Engagement

I am unfair. The winter flaps my patience
and the hunched back of the man who lives
 on the seventeenth floor screams
a delicate tribute to dust. His diapers
sag like a willow begging for torches,
a pail–anything–to stow away the weight.
But enough of that. My thoughts, rambunctious with
Friday limps on the fringes. They wattle my bruised
ego, saving it for an outburst like a puppeteer savors
its marionettes. It is meant for children, like cough syrup.
Through the chimney the strum of a harpsichord
lullabies me to hibernation or something near to it.