fAULKNER'S wHISKEY gLASS*

I was just now, just now thinking about Leopold and Molly, Millie and Paddy, lemony-scented soap, postcards, mortuary wood roily with worms and spoil, the river that runs round and back, and quillwort, a scullery of thoughts thought back to front, front to back, a thoughtless thoughtlessness of thought. I am the cogito that considers with little regard for proper spelling, syntax, grammar or linguistic decorum. I am inconsiderate, small-minded, petulant, cantankerous, sometimes maudlin, devilish, mean-spirited, non-compliant, rebellious and myopic. I eat with my mouth open, chew like an ox, and slough water like lactate. I wear my cap back to front and my shoes on the other foot, I unbutton when I should button and unzip when I should zip; I smell when I should see and hear when I should feel. I shave with Faulkner’s whiskey glass and eat Smarties out of season; I sell unsolvable solutions and decry symmetry and good manners. I wear tartan on Thursday’s and plaid on Good Friday, and beg for alms in front of the Rector’s Manse, my knees curded into the fob of my trousers, legs akimbo, arms outstretched. I live each day as if it were June 16th, as I am always in bloom, and seldom if ever wear culottes or underdrawers, am a roustabout and roughneck, a skink and a gerrymanderer, and refuse to acknowledge synonyms as equivalents. I am backwards and forwards, a sidling and a stutter, I am the equivalent of nothing, and prefer it that way.