Tom Beckett


WHAT KIND OF FOOL AM I?	

I do not know how many of you keep a list of the kind of fool you make of yourselves.
J.L. Austin, A Plea for Excuses

I am the kind of fool who writes things down.

I am the kind of fool who more often than not erases or deletes the things I have written.

I am the kind of fool who thinks of himself as always already forgotten.

I am the kind of fool who cries too easily.

I am the kind of fool whose good intentions often go unrecognized.

I am the kind of fool who likes to listen, likes to watch.

I am the kind of fool who ghosts itself.

I am the kind of fool who evokes forgetting as a form of art.

I am the kind of fool who wants to be liked, or at least not disliked, but chooses to spend most of his time 
alone writing and erasing things.

I am the kind of fool who reads incessantly.

I am the kind of fool who others himself when touching himself for pleasure.

I am the kind of fool who would prefer to have a different kind of body.

I am an anxious kind of fool.

I am the kind of fool who is ambivalent about being understood or desired.  Of course being understood and 
being desired are not the same thing, except insofar as they are both fleeting states.

I am the kind of fool who rarely feels as if he belongs on this planet.

I am the kind of fool who feels himself to float precariously outside of himself at the end of a frayed string.

I am the kind of fool who always says more than I mean to.  Even when I say very little.

I am the kind of fool who is ruled by doubt.

I am the kind of fool who hears echoes and rhymes everywhere – in images, sounds, behaviors, events and ideas.

I am the kind of fool who was schooled by bullies.

I am the kind of fool who too often repeats himself.

I am the kind of fool who too often repeats himself.

I am the kind of fool who is often slow to catch himself repeating himself.

I am the kind of fool who loves puns and “Dad” jokes.

I am the kind of fool who seldom leaves home undisguised.

I am the kind of fool who rarely overcomes his sense of separatedness.

I am the kind of fool, in short, who impersonates himself.

I am the kind of fool who is tall and has a history of multiple head injuries.  I have collided with ceilings, 
chandeliers and light fixtures of many different styles and types, not to mention tree branches, wasp nests, 
stainless steel kitchen hoods, heat ducts, water lines, gas lines, and assorted other low-hanging objects.  
Not to mention a car dashboard when I was a toddler.

I am the kind of fool who has a lot of moving parts.  They just all move slow.

I am the kind of fool who was born to lose the Instruction Manual.

I am the kind of fool who jams the signal and attempts to parse its noise.

I am the kind of fool who chews over what he doesn’t know.

I am the kind of fool whose pronouns have waxed and waned over time.

I am the kind of fool who is frightened of almost everything.

I am the kind of fool who looks in the mirror and sees someone else looking back at me.

I am the kind of fool who doesn’t follow you on social media.

I am the kind of fool who is languaged here.

I am the kind of fool who wants to achieve vibrancy.

I am the kind of fool who feels a connection with ventriloquists and their dummies.

I am the kind of fool who stammers self-consciously.

I am the kind of fool who speaks out of turn.

I am the kind of fool who edges revelation.

I am the kind of fool who is turned on by category errors, context slips and lubricious thoughts.

I am the kind of fool who doesn’t know when to stop.

I am the kind of fool who has been known to milk a joke like a clock.

Tom Beckett lives and writes in Kent, Ohio.

 
 

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