The Scarecrow's lessons

The Scarecrow's Lessons

Once of the ago a boy was walking through the summer fields alone and not on his family's land. He loved to wander the fields. Normally ,he waited til after dark but this was an afternoon hike. The sky was gray and threatening rain. It was delivered in the form of a downpour. The boy was two miles from home and the only nearby cover was the shelter belt. That is a line of trees planted at the end of the dust bowl. The thick trees kept must of the rain off him. Drops of rain plinked the many windchimes that hung here. All different sizes and types. Metal, glass, ceramic. Who put these here and why would they do it? It seemed somehow ceremonial. And the ground below the trees was sprinkled with red and green cardboard cut out hands. It reminded him of some sort of a school holiday grade school project. The hands were folded and bent from getting rained on a few times. Looks like they must have been left in in the early spring. That's where he met the Scarecrow Shaman. An old Scarecrow from way back in his great grandfathers time.

Somehow the boy was not frightened by the animated Scarecrow. He was fascinated instead. Scarecrows have always been a tribe of story-tellers. So they appreciate nothing more than listeners. The boy asked him about the red and green hands. He then sat down cross-legged as the Scarecrow told him his first tale. The boy asked about the red and green cardboard cut-out hands. The scarecrow told him that they blow in on the south breeze from another world every year on the same day. Scarecrow did not know too much about why or how. He did know why children in some other world the occupies the same physical space as our own make them. In this other world society and technology are much like our own. The oldest known human temple was somewhere around forty thousand years old. Mostly constructed of megalithic stones and at one-time wood and plant materials that have all rotted away. A wonder it was to science. But then they discovered caves beneath the structure. In these caves were signs of human activity at least ten thousand years earlier than the construction of the temple. All along the cave walls are superimposed hand prints made by children. Hands dipped in vibrant red and green paint. The paint is the most amazing part of all. Modern synthetic latex paint like you might buy in any hardware store today. But pressed hand prints of it were made fifty thousand years ago!

A long warm wonderful summer with no school! The boy returned often to that shelter belt with its cascades of windchime calm. The next visit he asked the Scarecrow. "Are you alive? How can you talk if you are made of straw?"

The Scarecrow told the boy about an old tradition, now almost forgotten. The small farming towns and areas would use human sacrifice as a way of fluffing up the crops. There was a council of elders consisting of the most wealthy farmers. They would choose the most unwelcome to them anyway, member of the area Normally this was the drunk or drug user. Scarecrow was once a normal person. He once had a name, but his name and much of his human life was been forgotten over the years. The townsfolk selected some Men to fetch him from his shack. The local law enforcement, the high school jocks, and a few other guys who like beating up a drunk on a quest. Even if you suspect that you might be selected for the death of the year you don't know when it will happen. A couple bad cases fled town weeks before the ritual night of the Dream-Cheese. The jocks were planning on getting him early. The capture of this years sacrifice seemed to come a little earlier every year. Being as the lower character citizens often fled or made themselves hard to find until after the killing was over. Ed Gorilow evaded being caught for three years running. He of the drunken blackouts, home invasions and exposing himself to any female not in safe company. Fourteen weeks before the deed he would vanish. Many suspected he had a still somewhere so he didn't have to buy liquor in town. But they got him three months early one night while he slept on a park bench. The biggest of the jocks suddenly jumped up to plunk his heavy ass down on the sleeping Man's belly. He awoke making a "Umph!". He couldn't breathe and his struggles were weak as they beat him up and put him in a hold. He was taken to the holding room. Three drunk jocks got the year's prize. That's free sodas from the soda shop until the execution of the new prisoner. And lots of attention and bragging rights. Drinking is forbidden in this town but jocks age 16 up are allowed since they are holy warriors, the fighters of the town. The highest income earners also are allowed to buy booze because they are responsible. They also get the deca-vote. Meaning one of their votes = ten votes from other townsfolk. Now the Man destined to be made into a scarecrow is locked up. Fed nasty meals full of special herbal mixes to help prepare his body. He shall be transformed into a smelly black substance that resembles cheese. A cheese that smells like still wet roadkill on a July afternoon. A cheese so sweet, so delicious, yet so nasty. You must strain not to vomit with each nibble. But a vibration starts in the genitals and spreads out through the body of ecstasy! People dance and scream! Some fell writhing with visions, others writhed in orgasmic bliss. It never rained on this night, not once in recorded history.

Oh, that special time in the small towns! rural warfare and back-country savagery is a big pat of the reason these small towns stay small. A high death rate. But it all goes down to natural bio-rhythms and planting seasons, and traditions repeated from behind the veil of murky time.

The Dream-Cheese Festival Time-Line

1. August 14:Blue morning

Sleep late, the kids sleep really late because the parents sprinkle sleep inducing drugs into the last night's supper. The kids get super-sugar breakfasts and are handed out plastic bubble pipes of unearthly colors. The pipes produce colored bubbles that give off a faint glow. The bubbles pop with a little puff of smoke that has odd exotic scents recognized by the back brain.

1. August 15:Nectar: Day

Way up north they got these tear mills. A few hundred abducted and constantly abused kids cry into tear-milking machines until the ducts run dry and they go blind. The kids are then auctioned off. The really pure tear nectar has only 2% pus and blood from the constant milking. Several vials are needed to prepare this years dream-cheese. One vial is always given to the random winner of the year at the end of the day the name is drawn from a box of towns folk's signed tags.

1. August 16:Red and Green Hands
2. August 17:Candle Night

New puppy day. Candle night. The good kids get a new cute little puppy every year on this day. The year old dog from last year is sacrificed to the Tomato God In a back-yard pool party ritual.

1. August 18:The Graveyard Parade

The young kids and much more so the babies are paraded in the center lane of the graveyard. This to show off the sprouts of youth to the ancestors who churn in their caskets, making dry insect sounds of pleasure.

1. August 19:A feverish carnival

The holiday week is building to a fever pitch. This is the carnival part! All sorts of entertainment and fun games for kids and adults. Vendors of captured others, that's people from a city or town other than your own, have human shows for the towns they route through. The sexy dunk-tank. Captured teenage girls suspended above a water tank to be dropped with the thrown baseball hits the red square. The girls wear only long shirts that become see-through when wet. But they dry within minutes hiding their bodies again. So much money is made here. And for a cool one hundred bucks you can have a poke with one of the girls after hours. Sometimes the girls have to be restrained. A more violent fate awaits the; Men and Boys captured by free range agents who sell people to the carnivals. Never from around here is the code of business. Some carneys can get killed if they whore off a town daughter, but some other town far enough away to almost be a foreign land, no problem there. The Males have baseballs thrown at them as they try to jiggle out of the way. For an extra buck each, You can toss hard balls. After hours they bring out fresh victims restrained to revolving wheels to pitch real darts at/into. The concession stands sell liquor and hashish under different names and every year the cops look the other way. The children love the pull the rope to drown the old lady game. A complex series of robes and knotts controls a dunking chair an old lady is constrained in. They pull and switch trying to physically kill her. She will die before the night is out, probably from heart failure. Great fun to teach kids apathy to The Other.

August 20:Joy funeral for this year's sacrifice.

Someone has to die to make the cheese right as they love to say. And every year someone does die. They would all kill their own mother if that's what it would take. No problem and no matter how brutal it has to be. These people have been waiting on the dreamcheese all year and nothing shall stop it from being. The taste so bad, so good. This year's cheese to be. An afternoon joy-furneral. It's not like when grandma dies. It's not a sad occasion of the passing of a long standing loved one. Its a party! It's a joyfull occasion.

August 21:Dream cheese black as night

Deep day walking dream

Holding mercury dust bunny bubbles in my hand. Blowing blue shiny mercury bubbles with a pink wand. Never explain before you hang, You'll just sound insane. Instead play a melody of Beatles tunes in the Easter hay. We ride and fold this flaccid banner. If re-write the wrongs of the furled. A gristle speck and tinsel beam. A wild vapor plume gone awry. A perfumed bliss cup. Choco-mints is sweet they make you throw up. Sodder porn to the varnished wall. She glued raisins to her nipples. Ignite my way with a box of chili sauce powder and a telescoping kite. I see now I be now. I is and it shall plea now. Get down to the sound of the river bats flopping on our heated foil sheets.

Curdled nerds curled up behind the road. A deep dinner of after-maths. A moat of minty milk. Unborn porn and the stores that shelf it. The biscuits of love. the leather sandwich. An example of amps that are cool. Several syncronized shirks. A fuzzy pillow dusted with cheeto powder and lit on fiber. A cross country donut roll. The unusual bugles and the normal non-entities. The day late tomorrow train. Packing smoke into tiny statues. Snow cones flung into the among. Cattle beside the chode. Processed lint. The blank carnival. A total remix of unscored thoughts.

One way mirrors as borders. The balls of the fountain thing. Brandishing my othery stick. Cold gropes in the evening rain. Missiles packed with genitals. Moisture rash or the new era. Writing history in pig Latin. The small groves sprayed with lemon juice concentrate. The people's sheeples. The steeple of my favorite Grins. Short chubby girlfuck. Tolls tone true, undead deep blue. The fangs I framed for stacks they didn't remit.

Out in the sticks they have their dicks out. For a primate whose name they have forgot. Crickets learning new songs under a sickle curve of yellow moon. The beasts of turpentine and Amish cheese are out tonight. The kites delight and loop in the sky, free of masters they will sail till broken. We have spoken now we turn our faces towards the wall.

Sticky black mirror. Faces stuck to the walls. Again we bring the leaves, red, yellow, and brown leaves to matt the floor with. We cure banana skins into tassels that float on our heads in the breeze. Hundreds of feral dogs raid the town. Days afraid to leave the house. Tarot readings on cards made of leaves. Painted with nail polish. We shall frisk the breeze. We shall leave town soon. At the end of a long silver chain we shall drag the moon.

Coffee maiden whose full breasts flow with each step. Dressed in black satin, and crow feathers.

Why brisk? This risk? The settlement made of corn. And what bricks of beans. We can eat this place once we form a face. My lovely pets beyond the grave. We like lacks. Give me seasoned facts. in the end we fuck ourselves.

Pulling the soft gray wool off of late winter crabs. They can't stop sleeping. Nothing will wake them up. Pull them apart, put bits in your cup.

Scrape the crust off the vomit prow and we sail again for musty mildewous parts unknown. A forest of soft dusty cheese. An island of flightless ducks, all fat on moss and ready for the plucking. Just pick em up and twist their heads off. A boat ride to islands of green salt. To forests of lavender scented trees. To empty islands of seagull shit scribed manifestos.

He never expected it would happen

• 1

Brian West slept in a drunken daze. A long night of hard drinking, the last two hours of it a complete blackout. Now the sound of bulldozers and other heavy equipment woke him with a loud gong strike of hangover. His neck hurt bad, he slept on it wrong. A brutal kick of nausea jerked him curved. He didn't vomit. Not yet. He wrapped up in the scattered blankets and he tried to get back to sleep. Too much sound from the mysterious construction. Too much harsh light coming in through the glassless windows of his shack. After laying wrapped in the ratty blankets he has used since childhood for a few more minutes his stomach lurched again. His intestines felt like a coiled snake now striking. He jumped up, stumbled over the blankets that would not pull away but instead gathered in clumps under his feet. He puked a sour stream of vodka scented bile all over his door and arms as he reached out to turn the knob. Now outside in the horrible bright light. Puking up foam and little squirts of stinking acidic bile. His skull roaring with pain. It felt like the bones would break apart from the inner pressure. He tried to get a look at the construction going on in the field across the street. But the bright sunlight sent a feedback pain signal through this optic nerves that made him close his eyes in agony. He was so weak he crawled back into bed with the door hanging open. He clenched in pain for a few minutes and then he was in and out of sleep to vomit a few more times over the next three hours. Finally spent he drank a little water from the warm jug on his cheap and warped table he had stolen from a farmer's shed. Looked like it was half ruined from leaking rain water and had sat there for many years anyway. Turns out the farmer never even noticed it missing. Brian owned no land and he paid no rent. He was a homeless drunk who had retreated to this grove of trees on unfarmed empty farm land that had been bought in mass by a land speculator some four states away. He grew up in the small city this area edged. Back when it was a small town. He had lost everything along the way but that wasn't much. Now he walked around gathering bottles and cans to make scant recycle money from. He found Native American artifacts along the river he also sold for scant money. He stole the rest and that's how he lived. The only reason why he got away with it is the town people had forgotten all about him. Even if someone saw him out walking he normally flicked in and out of there thoughts and dismissed. Only vague distaste for this shabby person flickered. On his kitchen table three pumpkins stolen from a near field. He had some other produce taken from local fields as well. It was his main stable of food in the warm part of the year. His jacket he wore in the chill of the night even was plucked off the shoulders of a scarecrow some kids had rigged up in a corn field. A scary looking specimen. One blacked out night a few weeks ago Brian was chugging whiskey and pouring it into the scarecrows mouth.

• 2

Brian begins carving pumpkin masks from the shells of stolen pumpkins. Looking scary and sinister. Drunk mad eyes threw triangle holes. Blazing eyes. Gleaming blazing eyes.

A ocean of finger reefs

Delight the corn and shiny muffin darkness. I last to be kind. The glow of the after-furnace the grievance files piled to the roof. The grimset ghost. The only puffs that count here. The doctor of genital bumps. The cheddar-horn. The crescent foil flag waves above a scorched land. Red and Green card-board cut out hands fan the breeze. Tumble like leaves across the new way. A new day and the sun is blaring down. Roast the ghosts in savory piles. Trucks bump down pitted roads. A plague of frogs. Flattened green scabs flake on the hot day lane. Shuffle yards in stranger's yard while the Man is away.