Simply Stupid

Joking with Sharee about articulation. I know I'll be up later, thinking about things. Promised rain doesn't fall, all the more reason. Then it does rain, and the sound is a kind of joy on the metal roof. There wasn't enough time scheduled for this turn around, and I hadn't really studied the calendar: shit, the one I keep at home is always a month out of date. Raining, the AC on, I slip into the middle distance. There's a grass-hopper in the house, and I can't find it. Crickets are easier, because they lay down a drone, with grass-hoppers it's just the occasional shriek, and they move like bats, startling me. I keep a tennis racket close at hand. A double bladed sword, for the most part, as I've killed my writing lamp twice in just the last few days. It must be said that I'm a idiot, when I'm alone, getting along with my life; I'm talking out loud and walking into things. I love gerunds, don't think ill of me, nouns becoming verbs seem oddly exciting. I remember an incident, during a summer break, we were either in northern Mississippi or southern Tennessee, I don't remember where exactly. Some cousins and I were on an excursion to the neighborhood store, a mile walk, maybe, through bean fields and along dirt roads. We pestered anything we could, poking at snakes with sticks, always with a slingshot in our back pocket, ready to bring down dinner. We might have had a nickel each, enough for five rum balls, and it would take us all day to get to the store and back, wading through cotton fields and grader ditches. Why did I think of that? Oh, right, the multi-car collision I avoided when I pulled off the road watching a flock of turkeys working through a harvested corn field. It makes a certain kind of sense. Turkeys, right, a corn field. Memory aids. A bi-plane spraying insecticides. The Witness Protection Program. These dolls, I think, are wanted elsewhere. Too many heads and not enough bodies. The congeries. Style is an artist's rational. A syntax. The rain dries off to a few drops, isolated spatters, and then it's gone, like a dream you'd rather forget. Nothing if not fruitful, what you remember. Five, six, seven, eight, then a down beat, a clash of cymbals, a jagged chord hung out to dry. It doesn't mean anything, but it sounds impressive, glass packs on a vintage Mustang. I hate parades, and public displays of affection, they always remind me of my failures. I prefer Bach to Mozart. That tinny sound leaves a bad taste in my mouth.