Last week I was in Indiana for Thanksgiving and in the distorted dreams that come with sleeping in a new bed and environs I had something come into my head and I tried to write it down when I woke up.
A Poem
by Paul
entitled
Me
or
The Cowboy Poet Within
Written on the occasion of his 60th birthday, plus five days, and which came to him in a dream.
(to be read outloud in a rural southern Utah accent)
Write verse?
Git Serse*
*See Pronunciation Guide to Washington County and Parunuweap*, by Young and Lee, Southern Utah State College Press, Cedar City, 1948, under the entry for “serious”.
*This book du’n't exist, sersely. Think the poem’s too terse? I think yer delerse.
December 16, 2008 at 8:30 am
I loved it then and I love it now–you’re a genius. It’s inspired. Sersely.
January 14, 2009 at 6:13 am
OK, I’m ready for another post–it’s been more than a month. Write about your moonlight skiing. That’s an order.
January 19, 2009 at 2:14 pm
I kid you not, this reminds me of a dream I had two or three years ago, and you were in it, prominently. I wrote it all down somewhere, and though it’s getting fuzzy now, I recall the poetic punch line clearly.
It was in our house, but of course it wasn’t our house. The inside was white, not in the blinding way, but still in the everything in the background melts into white kind of way. We were sitting at a small square table talking and eating breakfast. We were having a long and wonky/nerdy conversation about something or other. There were one or two other people there talking with us. We were eating hard boiled eggs in little porcelain white egg holders, like grandpa used to. The conversation was almost over and I made some kind of clever wisecrack. You stood up with wide eyes and a smirk and declared in a humorous mocking tone, “Egg Long, Head One”.
That was the end of the talking but I actually thought about how weird of a line that was while I was still dreaming. I made a mental note before I woke up of the fact that while I knew there was a comma between Long and Head which was to be spoken with a pause (e.g. “Egg-Long… Head-One”, I also knew that the sentence was to be parsed and understood as “Egg, Long-Head One”.
I woke up laughing, true story.
January 20, 2009 at 9:04 pm
I’m surrounded by geniuses. I love both of those stories/poems.