jones

What we really used to find important.

There's was always that cowered dot of group agreement, something to necessitate an ample fern bath of friendlies that appointed or anointed blames and parlor rifts to other places; far be it to take on the burden by one's lonesome. And yet, that's exactly what one does: they chew and chew and chew, 'til there's nothing left but one petty granule or kernel, one little wee frig to set sail in a vast steppe, and my, them's no inland sea to taker takes or ticker tacks lightly.

I'd ask jones for an instance. He'd been back there, in back of me rather, chortling and stuffing fennel seeds in between what folds his chin and arms had been gathering over the season of pilsner and crotch yawns; accrued and requisite acquisition tome for a summer well-spent spunked and drunked. Jones, or lowercase "jonesy" would, like his role in any matter, simply lay back and let his sternum do the talking. Wasting and debating was no occupation for him. And I'd be hardly an ableist to attempt a kindly measure of sympathy for a character not worth the next sentence.

No sympathy for the we or the eyes.

A team manifesto and a dance of little gentle flies. No worry, nor matter in the laying of good brown toned reasoning, struts, and hardware shakers. The less misfortune meant the furthering of sod, careening rooftops amidst the wayward maelstroms of hurricane and betsy, both able, and neither had the rum to spiel otherwise, or at least something revelational along the topics of greasy haired bearded guys all clad in white, but watch for the leather sandals. Like plain clothed cops, it's the shoes, and I had read a few of those margins. Now and again, I'd felt that perhaps a better reasoning was dormant under the ladle of travels and spoons: I mean, all that silver, all that encrusting and plating, simply had to hold a cover, like alimony spreads the disease of felchers and tripes, some oil to the good, a way of dissolving it, that maybe a bookfucker had two more lies worth copulating the rug for, leaving my sundays to wonder whether mints were apropos of general illiteracy. But the girl wasn't gonna bite. And teethy dragons or races with your mates in hotrod magazine dreams (what, 1953?), these weren't topic for breeching or flying peat, nor the obnoxious writers of mirth and seeing brown lines about all us grounded dirt-angels. Man, it was enough. No team, no jones. Just footwear. 'Been to a number of shoe outlets too. But that's another glance; not worth your pickle or pin prick to time's being.

So what is?

A list? Furthermore, a loaded hunk: geode, twine, lumber, rugs, pellets, kernels, old books, and putting up fresh posters. Something had it in them to delay time a bit, or so I'd let it seem. Hitting the numbers with a smashed underside of tweed wasn't gonna dictate the next advent, nor make for clothy advances towards nubile dirt-angels, dust-matrons, or lithe, wee pixie-sties; (and foaming from the eyes), would ever there be a gesture, if one so fine, that you could read it in the back journal carry-log and make a reflection about this dial or that nugget, calling branches out when you saw them, or drawing fish chalices in the most inappropriate places, namely public restrooms. Those deities had claims, sure, and also reasonable. We all loved her for that, the realtor, the imperial we, and islands in the streams caught fresh, brisk, warm, and pure enough to cap, or at best begat the behest of your medico, and mine too, man. Quality had no fakery when the cement walls went up and all the porcelain was exported for a sudsy deal-breaker in maybe a midwestern plot, well-adjusted for antennae, satellite, and even the hardcopy routers of ancients and old bellies, those moustaches that recall this or that blame, taking oxen out to the so and so peasant so as to avoid a warring this or that, again, with the camouflage. A lady at the time, neither biter nor golden realtor, nor a betsy or beatrice, she, well, she had the oracle seal. I'd hear her whole pitch on the phone and it wouldn't matter. So much air supply these lungs could take, and all gassed limp and hot and waxy, then cold. Sopped with reverence, she was more mother than horse, and it took a desert again to get me back to norms.

There was no fucking jones, by the way.

Figments had trusts in their kids. I put a seven down and later took it back in exchange for a few handfuls of alkaline soil and whisps of hair to replace the fallen. Canoes, loam, yetis, jet skis, and a lake surface from end to end seeming like a walkable layer of slowly bobbing cobble, but on closer inspections, clods that we were, the layer was comprised not of pinkies or their nails, polished in that purple that only lakes in the area could imitate (they invented that color, see?), but a watery canopy of pinecones nearing the million billion mark. The trees hadn't taken notice of this, nor did the lake seem to mind terribly, either. One or the other, a jones perhaps, or a yeti, or a number, pick one, any, anything or word, the delve will do you good to ease the pain. It's momentary, a fleeting pelt, a rind of chaste deposit into say, pregnancy, retirement plans, or the unease of being around that parent with the palsy child. All takes would find relevance, and the cities would lay lines from apple to apple, exchanged by the teeth of strangers one day, as if passing the sin to finally give birth to the necessary pariah or toad or whatever you may call them, those people, yeah, those guys down there.

He points to the ground, forgetting that all had departed from his company; walked or swam in any direction but his or the direction he was going towards or had come from. No matter, no soul, he'd mutely resign; no memes or moles, and the DNA strand was seeming to be capitulating as well. Ferried down there by more skies than he'd ever imagined, I'd guess he was like the jones-character, but more prone to hair and eating the sagebrush. Teeth weren't of any importance, nor his calves or the respite that the summer could occasionally afford. All the tables, three legged or four, all required a forum, or a sense that there were guides to lecture, carrying sutures if need be, or arcane but thoroughly useful knowledge of pines, saps, rinses, creams, and vials. The blue wasn't blue enough for some reason. He'd need a reason. The ground had her cliches, but she wasn't gonna yield. I couldn't keep up with him: parroting his churlish twitch with my own invented type of easily forgettable tablature was like setting upon a town for a raucous night of barley and corn, but getting too much palm in the key closet by some bugger smelling of air freshener, claiming that tomorrow he'll be on the wagon, but having only signed on with today's lease which was a few minute's shy of midnight.

But down there, in addition to a condescension, a bad tone, a really low key musculature, there were also wedges in the valves, and all were becoming more apparent as the weeks told bells to chime and yell the beacons of years and sentences and nests for further wrings of the sopping sky to spit driplets and sores on musty levels of permeable armature and air. Criers, leaflets, and the bends of slow nitrogen contamination, it was back from the pillar and on with the rifling of bad jokes. Too much desert time, and I knew it. My little girl had stretched out, glorious in her suit, unfazed by my trifles. It was for her, essentially; we did the done deal, and I'd opted out. But back and through, lads and penis wearers: take a cautionary relish to foment for a bite out, maybe do some banking, and possibly step on a few cracks this time. All for none, I saw the stables to spurn the rooted wellspring of copper colored spring, armed with a mauser or sten-gun, pointing it without malice, but shoving it every which way. Him, or jet skis, or us hairs, our fractal insistence on beaters and brass and arch-tops, or the jowl storage facility of jones and his seed unseen; we, the lot, myself, the impervious, the mired lemons of congratulatory spine stings and slap back, didn't matter an ace, so long as she slept.