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.
  

Leaving early(Butch part 2)

 Waking to the sun shining in was a nice way to start the day
The two blond women sleeping in my vicinity also woke as I got out of bed.
The party had been something. I needed to get up and use the bathroom.
When I got back to the room to get properly dressed their eyes carefully monitored me.
I didn't know whether to expect a quip or an invitation just like highschool.
Which were mostly quips and nicely hurtful to a teenager with zero agency.

They went on looking at me. they themselves were absolutely gorgeous.
I packed my few pieces of gear and stood out the front at the top of the terrace.
I had called a taxi. Instead of a taxi, A family with two earnest and elegant dalmatians arrived walking up the driveway. I suddenly panicked when I thought about the resident english bullterrier.
I soon scolded myself under my breath. I was supposed to be one of these people. 
They didn't get upset, they let reality happen like a spiritual practice.

You were supposed to choose what you remembered, bring it up in drunken self commendations and only poke the hornets nest with tirades when most of the party were strapped into whatever opiate or intoxicant had full control.
Deep down I wished most of the guests were dead. And I wouldn't have minded committing the act myself. Few of them held any real value as human beings except saying the right thing at the right time.
Why the hell did that matter. good timing but th erest of your life and actions make you a shitbag.
But it wasn't on them, it was on me, I was responsible for keeping better company.
One day I would end up using a few of these poor souls for my own lucrative messes.

As the dalmatians and english bullterrier smelled each other the taxi pulled. The dogs and the family with the dogs knew old Butch they just seemed overdressed for the occasion.

Butch(part 1)

 The english bull terrier was a popular feature of the party.
It hopped forward and back and barked.
Many tried to make it's acquaintance and failed.
The freckled dark haired girls jeered the new guys who walked into the party. The animal was curious about me. But I wasn't going to give it the opportunity to fase me infront of forty guests.

It was the hosts birthday I guessed, his house upon a terrace above the roadway below.
Motorcycle repair clients had come to pay and congratulate the guy for his birthday.
Many of the guests formed semicircles around Butch, as he gave speeches about motorcycles.
How he'd fixed them, adventures he'd had on them. Attempting to share new material. With limited vernacular old bits getting in the way. But the audience was getting there, smoke and empty bottles littered the open garage.

He had his die hard friends, the guys that wouldn't leave his side. and half a dozen women who represented their girlfriends, yet Butch was already familiar with all of them at one time or another.
And they were the fuel for Butch's speech, they knew when to "whoah" or "hoorah" strategically, more from practice than tact and wit. 

After his "I am the best fucking shit you have ever seen" speech. He got to passing beers out and making jokes about the actions of some of his guests on those previous drunken nights of the current early spring.

SImple baby

 It blew a bubble
It told me life was sacred
It opened the clouds and gave sunlight
It chooses it's preference

it negotiates its vulnerablilities
it ingests and excretes under supervision
It spells love and wonder
It points and glares

What did it see
It chooses its likes and dislikes
It doesn't recognize its own hand
It got born recently

Felt like it

 Townsville, Australia, early afternoon. On wooden benches outside a nice cafe.


Both of us were seventeen
I went for your hand
instead of pulling back you left i there open
So my hand went into it

Told me about passions
we noted where they intersected and overlapped
It's quite a thing when the body vibrates with joy
But when the heart feels and the brain thinks it's just a...

Curse the hormones the forwardness fostering awkwardness
The sense that we can when we must go slow
Coffee arrived and conversation was a day
With it's shades and it's beams

You reached for my hand and I left it open
Then a young man came to the table
I thought he was the server
He sat not angry, not happy just present

I looked back at her her face neutral,
"Who is this?"
"It's my boyfriend." she said casually.
"Why did you call me here then, if you had a boyfriend?"

"Felt like it"