Bleachcroft courtyard and the rain

 Waking the warmth gone
Rain is falling in 
The roof is gone
I draped a blanket to stop the drops

But they kept on 
I turned over
The color of my existence
Color of my dreams

Getting leached out
The dye of the purple sheets fading
My face looks up at imposing mornign cloud
Tears camouflage

Waking the on the damp concrete
The inner sanctum
No slumber
No relief and soon there will be aspergillus

So I walked out of what was my abode
Pavement looking up at me 
mocking me urine colored brown
Also fading

The rain spares none
I looked up as each drop ran down
beachfront grin as I realized
It wouldn't change me

Beaven dessert server

 Beavan came speeding in happy napkin
Sparkling disposition
Team player apron sewn together with slogans
He arrived cheerful fully buzzed up

A ton of witty remarks up the sleeve
Or under the apron
Pen and pad and saliva for the consonants
A motor of a man giggle

Back with over sugared dessert
Full of creme and m and m's
Insuline spike and elf beaven left the room
Speeding around like a humming bird on crack

Consumption is the meaning of life

 life is a feast
Eating is hell
Bread is from yeast
Chicken eggshells

Life is a rump
A romp and a flop
Stools made from stumps
Ornate table table tops

Thus crowd over food
Excrete and bleed
Hunger renewed
Once again feed

Savour ingest
Extract digest
Hunger a pest
Linger a chef

The moon refuses to return

Pining miles from the town
She thinks of the moon, needs it close

Exposed scrub brushy like a death fringe
She remembers watching moonlight split and splatter

Grinding grey drooping dry
She wonders whether the moon misses the earth when daylight arrives

A stubby round structure stands clay and fiber
She imagines the grace of the moon 

Erected like a wooden cross in the breeze
She imagines the moon caught between its arms

Empty form hanging on underneath peeling the dust off
She wishes she could hang her dreams there 

A human woman stands there hot northerly scorching crops
She thinks about the moon touching the hills of her being

Naked in the shape village men's dream
She imagines being painted silver as an extension of the moon

The house is oval and needy like the faces in the village
She looks at the moon and predicts it's own desires

Drying clothes outside touching her arms night wheezes
She imagines sleeping under the cross as the moon peaks and tickles her

Awaiting a maid who left the village a decade past
For a man who got lost in distant mountain ranges seasons passed.
She waits for both and even the moon refuses to return.

Her smile is the experiment

Smile begins before she knows 
a tiny movement at one corner a clean pond this mouth of hers
Pouring into another then another
until her whole face seems to have agreed
Her dimples arrive late enchanting our hearts
as though they have travelled some distance to get there

When she laughs it keeps changing
opening, narrowing, breaking into smaller smiles
One appears when she understands
another when she is amused
another when she catches somebody watching
and suddenly the first one seems like an experiment

Something unfair about it
carefully displayed
Mouth repeatedly discovering happiness
Two dimples perform on her face
Everyone nearby waits
for her grace

I never told him why

 I never told him why

I pulled a baby boy out of the landfill today, what a miracle.
It started to cry as I pulled him out. As If he preferred to be in there.
There were pieces of sticky wrapper and dead bugs clinging to his blanket.

I wrapped him in clean towels. Yes it was alive and healthy.
I looked around, there was no one there.
I could just guess the fate of such a lovely little creature had he been left there.
I stomped across broken chipboard which sunk my legs into the trash heap.
I found myself peeling off chicken wire and adhesive plastic sheets off myself as I navigated back to my truck.

I never had a son. I looked at the baby. It’s fat face and questioning eyes held mine.
I maneuvered both opening the cab door and holding onto the baby at the same time. It was pretty simple. I cleared my gear out and placed him on the seat draping and clicking the seatbelt into place.
Not far from the entrance stood a tall cardboard box with a water stain on it. Intuition told me to go over and open it up before I left.
I took a box cutter and went and opened up the large cardboard box. It was full of toilet paper and diapers. Well hallelujah. I took out the first layer of toilet paper which had been spoiled by some form of leak probably from where it had been shipped from.
Threw the box on the back. Rousing the baby.

I got into the other side of the cab, turned the old hunk a junk over. Looked down at the baby who now had his face all scrunched up as if he was going to burst into tears.
As we left the landfill,l he did burst into tears.
The worst of it was, his face was almost going normal again as a beam of sunshine came in and lit up the internal cab quite amazingly.
But then it came, and whatever I did to slow down or cut down a gear, it didn’t seem to matter.
The speed bump threw the front up chassis and slammed it down. Disturbing the baby.

For the twenty minute ride home it was the shrillest cry session I had observed in my life.
But it didn’t put me off. I would take this baby home and figure out what was what.
I got in the door and investigated him. looked him over completely.
There was a little nametag on his baby suit, it said Harold. His name was Harold. I started cleaning him up and changing his first diaper.


I decided he’d be my son.
Didn’t tell the police, didn’t try to go after the real parents. Just took him out, cleaned him up, bought a crib and started mixing milk formula.
Years later this boy my son helped me dump landscaping and garden waste into the landfill. He always loved the place. I never told him why.

The plastic rifle(Butch part 3)

 Before I could leave I spotted Butch and a handful of his disciple like friends dismantling a styer AUG rifle on the lawn.
I went over and pretended I knew what I was on about.
The guys seemed very affable. A lot of cleaning going on.
The genuine conversation like "why the hell do you need a machine gun?" never came up.
One of the guys was in the military I didn't fish for details.

I recounted a day when Butch had turned up to school dressed as Rambo.
We were almost ten years old. It was one of those months where the kids were synchronized in their lunchtime games. There was so much running and screaming to be done, going back to class felt more natural.
Butch had brought a plastic toy machine gun to school. and was running around with a trail of kids following him. Not to disarm him but almost in a strange form of imitating him. As if they didn't read the other groups of kids who merely thought them to be Butch's sidekicks nothing more. The grunting dregs of his personality along for the ride.

That thought left me questioning my own purpose there. Was I catching up with a long lost friend, or was I some container for charisma of Butch.
Thankfully I never hung out with that group enough. and his mannerisms as a middle aged man were nothing like they were in his youth.
But the guys that were helping him with the rifle certainly seemed like poorer minds or somehow dependent on Old Butch for some kind of direction.

Butch remembered the day and regarded me.
But he looked me in the eye and he said it direct. Now this was probably the real purpose for why I had gone along to this event. For someone like Simon Bernard Elliott would never go to such an event.

"You were scared and you still scared to live your life. You mock the world from the safety of your office. You cling to the familiar. Why don't just confront life. Wake up to it. Shake it. You don't need to understand it. I will give you that plastic toy rifle, not as a joke. But as a token to remind you one of your goals as a man is to chase challenge and passion. And don't be investing in every kind of insurance or protection."

He pulled it out of nowhere as if he was holding it the whole time. the same toy machine gun.
But the speech hadn't been rehearsed.