3/16/1998 g.g.Ashbrook
Hunks of cheese were laid out on spoons, out on the edges of boards, out on the back porch of Hempter, out to look forward to a few green moments of round mound peace, where water rocks in wrinkled road production, Rome never had their simple style like a mountain, but he put his tension cables in the back where he’d always gone. Round it up, reeling up wires, spools of thread covered with socks. Looking around his room when the old lady with the Alligators walked by, that’s what you get for having a two walled house. He slipped from the covers and pulled himself along the ground from the side off his mattress to the ground outside, to a patch of green around a single tree. He slithered up into it’s branches, he let himself dangle from the top. The Neighbors boy would come outside, till his pop told him to stop. And he’d toss grapes and cinnamon wafers, and bars of poll-chest tapered teeth, ringlets, hooping Hempter’s fingers, a shirt over his back, a tie and socks and a wall socket. Or Hempter would just let himself swing and he’d look into the sky, suspended by a loop he’d had drawn onto his face. It was a thick loop, made of failed marriages, and he could slide it over a tree branch or whatnot, waiting for the willfall, or the Will’um Busket Bak’o Dancers, to come out and begin talking about their shoes. Merli was still in the company. And with banana and bread from pop-stop he’d watch her morning rituals. More he would watch her eye’s. And wonder, about when earliest on she stare, off into something, or back into something, or into refuse or out of refute, or for day’s coming long or for Past Kiss spent short on ship’s backs, planting annuals, pulling weeds, crossing over into, growing up in a vault, "Tell me, that when you look at me, you see nothing more then a lamp shade?" Time’s myth chrystening cracks at dawn, with a thousand teeth, a million nostrils, twenty two ears, and a hillside of eye’s on migration. Oh the eye’s are just resting, beating their wings on the back side till day-come, then we must cross oceans of cold with our wingbeats. Ears form on the surface of fruit skin, with a galaxy spiraling behind the eyes through the world they spread their net. Out into small loop-let’s of chrome over copper, out of a shower as the loops sloop over. Out onto a ground with a humble humm. The water is cold and she stamps her feet and curses and runs to the tree with her towel; where she sits shivering, huddling, chattering, talking fast about past hollidays, anything to get her mind off the cold. Her toes in never stop locomotion, her head bobbing.
Hempter wasn’t looking. It was one thing to watch your neibors when they come out in the morning, another to spy down on after shower shivering. So he didn’t look down, he just hung there by his face loop thinking about what excuse he could give for being innocently in such conveniently unredeemable watchview. The sun was behind mist as was the tendency of the countryside, the barns of limeskin had yet to begin foraging for loose or slightly floating cows, the mimer-made of river like seal or soap was fallen into the dirt by the bag, the trees postponed their shopping, but she was still shivering. One bird now and then, but mostly hush, and the off-tinker of tin cans and eggs from bipedal folk. She started to hum, but the wind picked up, said how it would prefer a cold silence. Where Hempter drew his flute.
A few sharp sounds, then he wove a clothe that the wind could not blow through. He sat it over the tree like a cap, and drew a few low soily sounds. The smoke of his tune pipe seasoned the air, and the air he blew into kinder seasons. His pickle fingers stroked cold strings into hot springs, sore teeth into soaring over cliff edges and in and out of caves; quick through the branches of trees,
darting with a half mirror flock. Triumphant tubas built and took down a barricade at the sametime. Birds came from far lands with gifts that they’d eaten on the way. Shoe maker’s from the moon had come with shoe’s with a lighter soul, all worn through, and a bag of dust much the heavier. And they all came round to look, to spy. With the boy on his loop and the girl curled on thigh. With a brazened biscuit, and the cold going right by, and a musket flash of passion fruit, to sprinkle over that tree. Yellow clouds un-tuning harp strings and whispering insults, and bringing fine tooled linen. The girl un-cold, the boy unshamed, with a little smoke and blowing. The bumble bees come in with their lime and mortar, humming with unnatural intensity a song that would suit the daughter of a king who was just waking up into a spinning kingdom of Pots-bang, Plaits-drop, saucers hurled, talking with only an inch between the eyes for the most common question or comment, keep it moving, windows traveling along walls and the light in the room stirs like a thick sauce; the bees with pursed lips and rolling eyes, multiple pairs of hands all clapping with delight at the waking or held in benediction or pulling things out of the air to show you, like a new pretzel, unable to control their song and letting it propel them around the room in a fashion where they’d have to be chased, alternating whispering and shouting the days appointments, holding her clothing high into the air over her, letting it fall with the first silence; if you have the right clothing the bees sound quite reasonable. "But those are only just the bees," the bar maids, the hour keeps, the ladies in wanting, the overture of sandals, the pour couples come to coffee as twolumps, sweet & earthy, the chandelier of Corkwood, worm wholes as best as halves, dotting the mindyourown-morningwood ceiling, birds at the window sill, or branch, or gate, or on her shoulder. Come for nicotine and patchwork quilts, or for a matching set of silver, or for a bottle of ink and a piece of the world, for another side to the neighbor’s travesty of son died, write them up a receipt. The girl under the tree gets up and runs with that receipt into the rain, back to the shower, and she wake up nice and warm to the last few notes, what remembered wanted kindly, and the day’s work ahead, the day’s ground under foot, her eyes a thousand years covered and warm, trying out her different forelimbs, stretching out her sprigs, still leaning up against the tree, the orange bulb snug back in the socket, tent spikes, the horses stealing apples from Horace’s boy, water boiling, one wind blowing dead grass before spring, the lingering aroma of Cannabis. Merli pulled on her shoes and saw Hempter dangling from above in the tree with a crooked smile and closed eyes, foliage is not to be seen without invitation.
The rest, the dancers, performers, marketers, balloon experts, Vetranarians, etc., etc., were all on the other side of this hill. This small bunch band were those high tuned four lumpers who kept that whirl a spin’in.