Pogonotrip.

So this is going to be an odd post.  I decided, at some point tonight, to write a poem about Rich's epic beard. Instead, I wrote a story inspired by the beard. Then I quickly hammered out a poem that needs a lot of work. But I was amused either way, and here they are.



Pogonotrip


I am hiding in the bushes. I am crouched like a tiger underneath the green curtain of what were once well-kept hedges, but have now become a suburban jungle. Abandoned houses in every direction with yawning doors and broken windows—they want scavenging, they have supplies that could assist me, perhaps some more ammunition for this gun that I hastily learned to use. Aim at the brain; it helps if you think of it as a short-circuited computer. If it doesn’t kill it, at least it won’t have the teeth to eat you with. The brambles scratch at the base of my skull, gently. I try not to move when it tickles, or they'll find me. The survival guide didn’t say anything about what to do if a tree tickles you. A giggle. A grunt. The smell of gunpowder is usually described as acrid, but no, I think it is almost savory. I bolt from my hiding place towards the nearest Tudor-style husk, hoping to find some canned food or, God willing, clean running water. Bingo—beets. Cobwebs hang everywhere, settling on my neck as I bend and spend time equivalent to an episode of Scooby Doo using my churchkey to pry open the can. I try in vain to brush them off, and I settle into my pickled beets. It looks like I’m eating raw and bloody meat. For a moment, I feel like one of them, and there is no war, only hunger and sport. Then I grab my weapon, I’m out on the streets again, and I know which side I’m on. A spider stowed away on my head. I feel it crawling down my occipital bone and then my cervical vertebrae, dancing along the column that holds properly firing neurons, and separates me from the walking dead. I smack it, and it dies much less messily than my usual quarry. Back in the bushes, I am being tickled by a branch again. While the coast is still clear, I turn and begin to hit and break the branches that would hover around my head and potentially give away my position. The branches seem to say "Woman...what are you doing..." as they creak and snap. I smack one of them in the nose to quiet them. They seem to wiggle their mustache in irritation, and they are most certainly frowning.

As I wake up, I realize I am punching you in the face.


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it tickles the back of my neck
when we’re sleeping at night,
and I dream of the jungle.

did you ever have peach fuzz?
or was it always
a forest growing down

you could probably
get into bars in junior high
with that thing.

the other boys
talk about it with envy
when you're not there.

I often wonder,
when I am looking at your handsome face,
what your chin looks like.