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
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
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
