LITANY OF THE LITERAL

“You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and—somehow—the wine.”
Billy Collins

You are the peat moss,
and the smell of motor oil in my cotton work gloves.

You are the tendency to repeat jokes.

I am the dream about the two 10-year-old boys trying to rent motor scooters.
I am the reckless use of hallucinogenic drugs.

You are the disbelieving stare of a substitute teacher.
You are the fat paintbrushes, and the sound of a lawnmower at ten in the morning on a Saturday.

It has also become quite clear to me that you are the brown, healthy bread with the hazelnuts and something that looks like buffalo grass baked into it.
You are not, however, the polyunsaturated margarinesque spread that we've finally just come to refer to as “not-butter”.

I am, on the other hand, the “Like, dude.   Whoa, stoned scooter riding! Yes!”

I am also the large brown scar, the result of a driving a scooter too close to a parked truck on Camino Segundo in Ensenada many New Years ago.

It should go without saying--but I'll state it for the record--I am not nor have I ever been the patronage of any blond Mexican prostitutes named “Tina.”

You are the scent of hand cream and the feel of clean blue cotton sheets.
Oddly enough, you are also, the sound of hand cream.   (Don't ask me how that works.)

I am the buzzing drone that causes people not to hear important statements, like “Recycling pickup is today.”   I am not, however, the insipid television programming that keeps us awake past a reasonable bedtime.   I am the television itself, though.

You are the nightlights by the bed—the one attached to the wall on a swinging arm and the short squat tabletop model that I often knock over with my restless pillow.
You are also the cozying effect that rushing winter wind outside has on the warm bedroom.   I'm not sure I bear much without your fortuitous ability to be that.

I am the oblique geometry of tools strewn about the garage floor.

You are the peat moss.   You will always be the peat moss. Any soil enhancer, in fact.

You are the tendency to repeat jokes.

JD Frey -- January 13, 2004