Well, I should say, House.  Because this House was alive, a real, bona-fide living House.

In addition to that, this House lived in an envelope.

That’s right.  An envelope.

(It is a buyer’s market, right?)

At any rate, I’d been out of work for some time, and as a favor, the House had hired me to paint a new coat for its exterior.

Except, instead of paint, the House had asked specifically for poetry.

So, I was writing, in very large and tall letters of what appeared to be a scratchy, knockoff version of Edward Gorey’s Gashlycrumb Tinies script the following stanza:

Find a snake in the grass,

cut him back with the lawn.

Though, he’d make a good pet

if you cut him back young.

Lovely, isn’t it, just lovely.

For whatever reason, that little stanza of near nonsense has haunted me, today, until I was finally forced to write out a full poem. If that’s indeed what I’ve written.

I mean, it has nagged, nagged, nagged me.

I finally gave in.  About an hour, ago. 

I hope you somewhat like it.  At the moment, in case you’re wondering, it remains untitled. 

Find a snake in the grass

cut him back with the lawn.

Though he’d make a good pet

if you cut him back young.

He’d feed on your whispers

at the end of each day.

If he can’t have the yard,

he’ll take the shed and the rake.

He won’t need a lot;

he’s accustomed to lack.

Just make sure he sees You

much more than your back.

And dear God, never touch him,

don’t let him curl up your arm,

don’t let him smile at your smile,

don’t let him warm

up to you or your family.

That’s an old trick of his.

Trust your eyes, first, then yourself.

And remember that this

is above all, a snake, in the grass

on your lawn,

and even if you did

cut him back while he’s young,

the whole point of a pet

is to know who is The Master.

Give a pet love with distance

or else it’s disaster.

And if, by this point, a pet

snake seems a bit much.

Do me a favor, then,

and keep your yard cut.

 I, of course, didn’t get this far in the dream. I woke up (rather, was awakened by Max, who was a rude dog this morning, if I do say so myself). I only managed to get that first stanza “painted.”

So, I, sadly, do not know if the House even liked what I was doing. I’m not even sure if I liked what I was doing.

Amanda, at least, was kind enough to say it was, and I quote, “[quite] Shel Silverstein of [me].”  I will wear that as a small token of genuine appreciation for what I know to be a true artist’s spirit, of which I possess, and in spades.

 Rhyme and meter…well, they don’t belong in the game of spades. Or hearts, or Gin Rummy, or Old Maid.

 Now, deal.

Related Posts:

• How on earth do you wash a Fedora? [and other random thoughts]…
• So, you know…I really like a potato log.
• Sometimes, it’s a lonely thing. And sometimes, it’s like being Jesus.
• $3 Makers
• "Pickled sausage isn't on my Wake-Me-Up Stuff list."

I don’t think so. No.

I. Don’t. Think. So.

I am, personally, mad-dog in love with the potato log. I look upon its tasty goodness as a drowning man would a life raft.  (I wrote that and then had this visual of being a drowning man and seeing a life raft and then, in that life raft I saw, like,  hundreds of potato logs and my heart started beating really fast and I almost had to take half a Xanax).

So, you know…I really like a potato log. It has taken a place of supreme necessity in my life, the potato log.

It has become—a reward.

For what, you ask? Why, for driving to work each morning.

Still confused?

Here, let me explain:  See, I hit this same halfway point (of melodramatic ennui) every morning.  This halfway point is roughly next to that strange Mexican restaurant that might also be a hotel at the second four-way stop-that’s-really-a-six-way-stop between Brooksville and Macon.

For some reason, each morning when I pull up to this engineering near-failure of the MDOT, I’m tempted to call it quits, throw in the towel, or turn the car around and go back (something I never do). And each morning, I have to force myself to take a large-down-to-my-heels breath and say, “Kris, you can’t get a potato log if you don’t get to Scooba. That’s where the potato logs are, Kris. Scooba. So, get it together and drive on.”

It’s a successful piece of motivation if for this one reason only: I’ve tried the potato logs at every other available gas station between here and Scooba (even the pitiful, dilapidated one that, at first glance, would appear to be a prime locale for those in search of the White Rabbit, but is indeed a usable gas station. The sign practically yells it at you, “Yes! We are open! Yes!” They did not, however, have potato logs).

And I did not stay there after realizing that fact.

Truth is, they just seem to fry a potato log better in whatever the oil is at Gas Station #3, also known as Scooba Junction, with its little train logo on the building.

And no…I don’t want to know what’s in the oil.

I just know that if I want a potato log the way God intended, I have no choice but to go all the way to Scooba. (Well, that and also I work in Scooba).

Sigh.

Today was one of those days that nearly won out over my want of a paycheck. Today hurt. I have never wanted to get in my car less than I did this morning, and that’s counting days I’ve driven through tornado watches, fog advisories, and goats.

I wasn’t sick, I wasn’t unhappy, I was simply done. That’s what I realized this morning.

I was simply done.

I couldn’t fathom another hour and some such minutes behind the wheel of my car having to share the road…or share, period. I’m through with it, mentally. Why my body continues to go and drive to my office every day is beyond me.

I’m worn out with being a “roadie.” I’m tired of all the truck drivers; I’m tired of Miss Jesus Is My Co-Pilot who absolutely must drink her coffee while applying eye shadow at 83 MPH, and smoke. I’m tired of nose pickers, cell phone talkers, motor-mouth singers, speed demons, omni-blinkers, and the elderly.

I’m tired of all of them. All of these people who, I can only assume, wait every morning just for me, before pulling out from their respective driveways and back roads for the sole purpose of getting in my way.

As I slung my own car, Tigi, onto Highway 45, bright and early this morning, I slowed a teensy bit as I came up to the first (and last) exit that would allow me to easily wind my way back home, but I didn’t because a) I’m not independently wealthy so I have to work, and b) I was starving and I knew of only one thing that could satisfy it: potato logs.

So, I suckered myself into the drive.

Maybe I was hungrier than I thought, maybe I was eating out of anger and frustration, or maybe I’m really just a big, fat lovable porcine extra in Charlotte’s Web, but I bought six potato logs, each roughly the size of a firm banana.

I added to that order a Coke Zero, or if you prefer, Joke Zero, and three small plastic tubs of ranch dressing…and one of honey mustard.

I am not one ounce ashamed, nor do I have even a gram of guilt about it, either.

Instead, I savored each hot morsel of that salty tuber flesh, licked the tips of my mystery- greasy fingers, and for several long seconds, when I’d eaten all of them, sat back in my chair and wore the crumbs like a well-deserved Purple Heart.

Because teaching is hell, and war is hell, and if this were a valid and logical syllogism, then you could say that teaching is war.

And you have to fight a war in order to get a Purple Heart. Even if you’re wounding yourself by gorging on a sack full of what’s floating in a gas station’s back room Fry Daddy.

It’s a fitting metaphor, trust me. Around here, the battleground never flattens out; new trenches are dug every day, and the troops stay primed for ambush.

And me? I stand out like the sore thumb of a sitting duck trying desperately to teach them about Sophocles and pageant wagons.

Maybe by the end of the week we’ll at least be able to spell Sophocle.

I mean, Sophocles.

See what I’m saying?

You’d eat your way to a Purple Heart, too, I imagine.

Related Posts:

• Yes, Virginia, I am a vegetarian.
• Five foods that made me who I am.
• I guess Boston has everything.
• I don’t have to use a walker to pump my gas.
• I couldn’t see the title of the book so it must have been about Scientology.

There’s no rush to this ritual. We enjoy a long dinner with the rest of the family; we gossip, we share news (even the made-up News, an old habit we used to do when I was younger, that’s found some way to stick, even to this day).

What you do is, you mute the TV, you guess at what’s being said by looking at the graphics, and then you tell your version. It was quite a shock, for instance, when I realized that Bush had actually been re-elected, and even greater still, when I found out that Navratilova was an honest-to-goodness lesbian who barely got the rights to animal visitation; I’d thought she was trying to sell her dogs on national television and had been arrested for it. I hadn’t realized that what I’d been watching was a court trial, of a “divorce,” per se.

This will be the death of me.

It’s not that there’s all that many places to see or drive by in my small, Haven Kimmel-sized hometown. It just gives us time to ourselves, to draw out the necessary conversations that seem to be so much a part of this post-Sunday Dinner ritual.

I always have to do the drive, in his Cadillac, while he sits in the passenger side regaling the same stories, world without end, that he does every Sunday.  Mrs. So-and-So used to live there in that house until her nephew got high on “the drugs” and broke in and bludgeoned her to death, and then dug up that gorgoues purple clematus, for no reason at all and left a big hole in the yard; or, that house is where Old This-and-That caught fire and burned to death when lightning struck his hot water heater, he was asleep, which you shouldn’t do in an electrical storm; you know, stories like that.

It’s too, too painfully southern.

I love every minute of them, though, I really do, despite the nature of this blog. I truly relish these drives.

And every now and then, he recalls a new story, a new moment shared, a story stolen, either at a funeral home, or at Piggly Wiggly, a grocery store that he affectionately refers to as The Pig, when writing his checks there. He used to concoct grocery lists in an aisle-by-aisle fashion, so familiar was he with their layout. It certainly maximized shopping time. Gave you more time to socialize. 

I’ll have to tell you later about an incident that involved a church scavenger hunt, a cucumber, and Miss Ada Lee.

Yesterday, though, as we drove past the sod-soaked fields and yards of our neighbors, the rain has truly been remarkable and of legend, here lately – I keep anticipating animals, approaching two-by-two, gathering on the carport, staring eagerly at the Cadillac, trying to figure out how to get into it. It’s a large Cadillac, and so, somewhat similar to an ark, at least, I’d think, to present-day animals, who I imagine are about as intelligent as the rest of us in the 21st century - yet, we found ourselves taking a new road, a different route, this time.  It was only new because we usually just drive past it and not down it, it’s a dead end, but we didn’t do that yesterday. No, sir.

We drove down it, to the cul-de-sac, and there at the end was a hearse.

U.L. told me that it was an old one, from Nowell’s. And that the man who lived in this house (the one we were practically in the driveway of , so I began to turn the car around before we aroused too much suspicion), had bought it. Because he wanted it. He did not, in fact, work at Nowell’s.

He’d just always wanted a hearse, he said. 

This, U.L. discovered while purchasing some Cool Whip and fresh coconut shavings at Piggly Wiggly, preparing to make his celebrated Coconut Cake, and this man, we’ll call him Frank (because that’s his name) was standing behind him, bragging about the fact that he’d gotten a good deal on that death trap of a hearse at Nowell’s. It only had 40,000 miles on it, and they took six grand for it, as is.

To which U.L. registered surprise. The town indeed must be smaller than he thought. People died all the time around here; it was a hobby. To have only amassed 40,000 miles didn’t seem right. It should have higher mileage on it than that.

I'd rather not know what's in the back.

The man, Frank, now enjoyed driving the hearse down Highway 397, fast as he could (right up to 60 mph, he said), with his two dogs, part-Beagle/part-Yankee, he’d gotten them off a cousin in Chicago, a shovel, and a plastic tarp. He’d drive up and down 397  until he happened upon some version of roadkill, and as a free service to the city, he’d stop the car, pull the shovel out from the back (it had not come with the purchase of the car, as I’d thought) and delicately carry them off to a final resting place, one less likely to be continuously mowed over by Broncos…and Cadillacs.

I trust he had very well-behaved dogs.

U.L. said a hearse was the last thing he would want to ride in. Frank told him not to worry, it would be.

Every Sunday, we do this. Dinner, small talk, a car ride, the same stories, sometimes new ones, and I love it.

And…I also hate it.

All at the same time, I amass these feelings in my bones, in my blood, my knuckles, and it’s usually with a fork of mashed potatoes, or butterbeans, or peach cobbler on its way to my mouth. It’s a saturating, obligatory, exhausting, and lovely wont.

One that I’ve often felt suffocated by, and I don’t like admitting that, but it’s true, because it seems too rote, rhetorical to matter.  I’d never been able to put into anything other than a simple series of words…maybe I wasn’t able to give it better context, or maybe I wasn’t supposed to, because it was of a higher order of thinking than I was able to get to on my own…

…until this morning.

Amanda, having been gone this past weekend to a wedding (yet another one!) in Memphis, had finally returned home, laden with Pottery Barn accessories for the den and bathroom, and this morning, she was starved for my attention, as best friends often become when separated (I starve for hers, as well, and we both ache and starve for Siciliana’s, Erin’s, and vice versa…would that we could all be thinner from such friendly famine – which is just slightly less oxymoronic than friendly fire, to the soul, anyway), she came bounding into my bedroom and woke me up.

It was noon, so I, now that I’m fully awake, have forgiven her. But, in her usual way, she had a passage she wanted to share with me.  This is something we all do, and constantly, this sharing works with each other. Usually, Amanda has more profound (and, also, published) pieces to share with me: cummings, Yeates, Hurston, et al. She is, I’d argue, far more well read than any of us, especially me.

Despite being famously non-auditory in almost anything I do, I humor her and listen. It’s a selection from Robert Penn Warren’s All The King’s Men. From page 35, she read:

The child comes home, and the parent puts the hooks in him. The old man, or the woman, as the case may be hasn’t got anything to say to the child. All he wants is to have that child sit in a chair for a couple of hours and then go off to bed under the same roof. It’s not love. I am not saying that there is not such a thing as love. [...] But this thing in itself is not love. It’s just something in the blood. It is a kind of blood greed, and it is the fate of a man. It is the thing which man has which distinguishes him from the happy brute creation.  

I heard every word of that.

I had to look at them, actually, I had to take the book and look at the words, themselves, I was that bothered by the accuracy of his prose. Once, during my first tryst with graduate school (in English), I took a Fugitive Poets class under the remarkably affable, fatherly, likable, and slightly off-key Dr. Phillips, and had read of Warren’s poetry, along with Davidson’s and the tragic Jarrell’s, which struck me less for its poignancy and more because he stepped in front of a bus and was killed, perhaps on purpose. I’d decided, as a poet, Warren’s work was soft, if terse, and what prose we read of his, I found suggestive of needing a closer editor…I felt that way about this piece as well, but somehow it didn’t matter in this context.

The original electric chair.

I was absolutely struck by the meaning, and remembered that meaning is what the reader gets to do, gets to fiddle around with…at least, ultimately.  (I’m a Fish advocate, Reader-Response, etc.). Critics, theorists can say whatever they need to (everyone needs a job, right?), but what resonates is if the reader takes up the mallet and strikes the gong.

Nothing else matters at all.

And this passage was so captively southern, so perfectly southern, so bitterly southern, that …it finally upset me. Warren had, all those years ago, in his novel about a corrupt politician, written down so clearly what I’d been trying to say myself. I guess that’s why I couldn’t: he’d already used the words. 

And had done so, so irreproachably.

I guessed then, after the reading was over, that the only way for me to climb to this higher order, is to do what he did, what they all did…

…just, take off for the open road, and find a quiet, muted place and live out the rest of my days, a fugitive.

Related Posts:

• I buried probably, like, a million birds as a child.
• Because hands can do everything but lie.
• I think "nice flip-flops" is an oxymoron.
• The monsters in my mouth.
• [...] losing Language and Outhouses.