Whipping Out the Ornery
some things are real some things are true and accepting them is like spanking yourself as a kid breaking a window scratching my father's car getting a bad grade were things i prayed would blow over things that might escape notice or things i could lie about to escape the punishment of a spanking a paddling a whipping a whooping a swatting...... i'm no longer a kid and i still don't like spankings thankfully never grew into the taste but sometimes you still gotta tighten those ass cheeks and give yourself a good old swatting not with a switch or a yardstick or a ping pong paddle or a flat hand or a belt like my father used to but with what you know you can't hide from anymore i was swatted enough as a kid that i finally got tough and didn't allow myself to cry and i still don't but every now and then something comes along that wants to make me cry i hate it so much i usually turn the hate of crying against that thing that's trying to make me feel but that's unfair cause the thing that wants to make me cry usually doesn't deserve a whipping so sometimes when i'm alone i let it give me the whipping i deserve and i cry like a child for just a second alone somewhere where nobody else but me and that thing that makes me cry can tell i remember as a kid shooting a neighbor's cat with my slingshot it didn't kill the cat i wasn't meaning to kill i was just an ornery sometimes mean kid but somebody saw me do it and they told my grandma so she whipped me with a switch saying i'm gonna beat the ornery out of you i know her whipping wasn't malicious cause malicious would have been telling my father about the slingshot and the cat and maybe in spite of her whipping that's what i loved about her the most nowadays it's rare that i take a whipping but when i do when i allow myself to beat out whatever it is that comes out when i give myself that switch i don't know what it is that gets beaten out but sometimes i think it might be love a love i refuse to feel or accept until i've beaten it out with the truth whipping that thing out that i notice only comes out when thinking of her a stark truth that maybe whatever that thing is it might be love for my grandma for her love and protection in the paradox of her whipping that saved me from him fucking paradoxes like the pleasures in tracking down truths but the pain some reveal too in truth's uncharitable all or nothing game self-inflicted pleasure and pain incongruous like that mean kid with his slingshot going after cats that ornery little bastard who was mean but could also love all of it the paradoxes anomalies incongruities directed inward now beating her love for me my love for her out of myself those truths between the incongruities painful to acknowledge but pleasing to chase like this honest pursuit of fitting things together the labor of beating it out whatever it is like the ornery she tried beating out of me a long time ago but alone now without her to swat it out so it's all on me to swat it out by myself with some truths i just can't leave alone beating it out with these words giving rise to those musty feelings again assured for a moment by their escape and their odor they're still in there somewhere those feeble old feelings mere reflections of some sad old truths old truths and feelings well hidden but struggling out once in while for a glimpse of daylight and a breath of fresh air giving me pause to want to cry while warming my coffee but loathing their tenderness fearful of their weakness so stuffing those relics back inside before anybody else but her and me know where they went
mrobins71 