Mudman
He's made of more water than his body can hold. He leaks, he sings, he can sing like a creek but when he croons he floods. He lives about a poison bog. He splashes for a lady. They don't come. Mudman sags, drips. He can't hold a job. He puts forth much love to his fellows. His love cloys, it makes noise, it would bankrupt the company. He's not made of mud, but he enjoys its properties. No one will marry him because he doesn't have credentials. He lost them in a bog. When he splashes for a lady, sometimes a little girl shows up. He shoos her away. She holds fast to her blue shadow, watching for a moment. Then she unfastens her blue shadow and steps away into hissing cattails. Mudman feels her footfalls like the bawl of a frog at the soft spot under his jaw. Mudman loafs, dozes, and generally fails to understand his predicaments. In the backwash of the backwaters, Mudman yodels to stay above water. The taste of flat coke wells up with a hiccup in the semblance of a kiss with one's own mouth. One's own muddied, mudded mouth. The rats haunt Mudman. Then, just their eyes, skimming the night like swarmed roe. He'll never marry, but Mudman loves all the people that pass by his bog. To each other they whisper he loves like a dog. They stop, they chat, they seem to give him something he wants, and he loves them for it. Mudman loves like an old hound dog. To call it selfish would be wrong. All Mudman knows to do is give what they give right back, splashed.
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He's made of more water than his body can hold. He leaks, he sings, he can sing like a creek but when he croons he floods. He lives about a poison bog. He splashes for a lady. They don't come. Mudman sags, drips. He can't hold a job. He puts forth much love to his fellows. His love cloys, it makes noise, it would bankrupt the company. He's not made of mud, but he enjoys its properties. No one will marry him because he doesn't have credentials. He lost them in a bog. When he splashes for a lady, sometimes a little girl shows up. He shoos her away. She holds fast to her blue shadow, watching for a moment. Then she unfastens her blue shadow and steps away into hissing cattails. Mudman feels her footfalls like the bawl of a frog at the soft spot under his jaw. Mudman loafs, dozes, and generally fails to understand his predicaments. In the backwash of the backwaters, Mudman yodels to stay above water. The taste of flat coke wells up with a hiccup in the semblance of a kiss with one's own mouth. One's own muddied, mudded mouth. The rats haunt Mudman. Then, just their eyes, skimming the night like swarmed roe. He'll never marry, but Mudman loves all the people that pass by his bog. To each other they whisper he loves like a dog. They stop, they chat, they seem to give him something he wants, and he loves them for it. Mudman loves like an old hound dog. To call it selfish would be wrong. All Mudman knows to do is give what they give right back, splashed.
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