Constipation can be oh so annoying. Cramping intermixed with bloating does irritate, if not circumvent purposeful fodder. I’m speaking not in the intestinal but beyond the bowel, my brain is blocked; I need relief. Metamucil is meaningless, so is helium. What to do? Perhaps I could generate some contemplation on a long drive through the country, or revel in some sort of road rage riding my nephew’s skateboard down hilly prairie terrain. I’m puzzled; my brain won’t fart—release gaseous fumes of thought. So, I meander through my backyard self-meditating—to center cognitive right before I reach riverweeds and sand. No… I’m not going to reference Neil Young’s Down By The River; Van Morrison suggests I instead hum Crazy Love—Rod Stewart’s version. So, I sing Fire And Rain, hoping Jesus looks down upon me—I won’t make it any other way.

My inability at coherence doesn’t blunt today’s beauty: the sun is strong in the turquoise sky; several cumulous clouds crowd the horizon above the indigenous fauna imported from Japan and all points south. I tug at a piece of kudzu. Placing the perplexing leaf under my tongue, I reabsorb non-probability including the possibility that kudzu is in fact poison ivy. It tastes somewhat oily, but so does peanut butter—Jiff, not Skippy. Flummoxed at the idea of bubblegum dental floss, I walk ankle deep into the Hockanum River’s soupy sublittoral wanting to quench my thirst. The water’s rippled coldness warms me. I fear not the snapping turtles or the Persian cat fish as nature imparts a brain buzz of epic proportions. But I can’t quite equate the sensation as a Queen of Dairy’s delayed brain freeze; instead, I dance to Ball Of Confusion within the river’s swirling greenness; I’m free to catch a train, or so a beaver tells me.

“What?” I say somewhat startled.

“Well, I did try to speak without stuttering. Did I succeed?”

“Perhaps it’s the braces on your teeth, Mr. Beaver.”

“I go by the name Beaver Brown… and yes these braces are a hassle and my kids got the flu, but it’s sure nice talking to you.”

“I told you to inoculate the little critters,” a voice echoes from the left bank.

“Davy Crockett?” I ask Beaver Brown.

“Lido,” says Beaver Brown.

“Why the buckskins and raccoon hat?”

“He missed the boat that day he left the shack.”

Before an answer formulates an algebraic equation on my tongue, a frog kicks me in the ankle reminding me of my frog phobia. I leap out of the water hoping for the north wind to make a tattletale sound of sensibility. “You’re asking a bit much, ain’t ya boy?” Fess Parker hollers out wading across the Hockanum ripping off his Davy Crockett clothes revealing his Daniel Boone underwear and way gross marshmallow kneecaps.

“Ignore him,” Beaver Brown whispers.

“I will,” I whisper back.

“You may all go to Hell, and I will go to Texas,” Fess Parker, disguised as Willy Wonka with red licorice fingers, fesses up with a Mississippi drawl—kind of muddy like.

Rather than snort like a snollygoster, I watch Fess fade into the flora, asking if he has a remedy for brain constipation. But he ignores me; the frog laughs; the Persian cat fish bark; Beaver Brown itches his nuts with his flappy tail. I manage naïve cataleptic confusion awaiting Beaver Brown’s promised train.

The smell of hamburgers and sushi barbequing on my neighbor’s porch momentarily confuse me. The aroma speaks to me in Vidalia onion with a slight twang of Emeril’s grilled banana splits with hot fudge and rum caramel sauce. I want to crave, but my brain’s constipation continues to clog my free flow of thought and reason—well, my coherence has much doubt, but I tend to disbelieve skepticism devoid of uncertainty. I walk barefoot through the manicured crabgrass to my neighbor’s porch.

“Brother,” my neighbor Zee greets me.

“Zee,” I answer back,

“Fancy a piña colada?”

I howl my approval; I’m thirsty: the Hockanum’s H2O doesn’t suffice in the thirst-quenching department at Sears.

“You look troubled,” Zee says.

“My brain’s constipated,” I say watching the sushi do a cha-cha-cha on a tennis court grille floating down the rolling river.

“Some days I feel like my shadow's casting me. Some days the sun don't shine. Sometimes I wonder what tomorrow's gonna bring when I think about my dirty life and times,” Zee says.

I ignore his logic as I watch a naked cowgirl dance across his pergola’s ceiling.

“Chuck?”

I can’t answer him; I swear I saw a naked cowgirl floating across the pergola’s ceiling. Her hair was purple; her breasts tofu.

Zee laughs.

“This shit ain’t funny,” I joke.

Zee laughs again. “ Let me tell you about my cousin Roland. Once at a potluck dinner, he rubbed the pot roast all over his chest. Excitable boy, they all said.”

“Who said that?” I ask. His wife hands me a coconut piña colada. Where she came from, I haven’t a clue.

“Clue is a game of chance. Climb the ladder and fall down the chute,” she says, in a practiced Greta Garbo voice while flashing her prosthodontist’s pride. I swear her Nordic features are south of the border crazy—Tijuana like.

I propose a toast to my lost perspective; she drinks from my glass. Zee jumps in the river screaming, “40 Love”

Soon I’m sensing a cerebral tingling. Before I can say anything, Zee’s wife draws in a deep breath: she exhales flashing a sardonic grin. “The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.” She laughs.

I understand her; I answer back, “Dang me, dang me… They oughta take a rope and hang me… High from the highest tree… Woman would you weep for me.”

She promises; the naked cowgirl follows suit in corduroy, helping my brain fart a most prodigious thought, releasing me from many things concaved. I breathe in relief. My lungs fill with otter musk as I hear Beaver Brown yell out from beneath the river bank, “Aye an' a bit of Mackeral settler rack and ruin ran it doon by the haim, 'ma place… well I slapped me and I slapped it doon in the side…”

Happy, I cry, I cried, I’m crying, until Sister Sinéad all pious like, reminds me that ye hills and dales and flowery vales that lie near the Moorlough Shore are ye winds that blow by Borden's Grove, asking will I ever hear it more… Where the primrose grow and the violet blows. Where the trout and salmon play. I excuse myself and run across the now bitching crabgrass towards my house intent on seeking out Gaelic garlic and my fishing gear. I have no time to think. Reaction is just subliminal subtraction.

 H'mmmmmmmmm