On the Road Again (cont'd)

I'm on the road again,
making music with my friends.
That is, writing in my head,
in a composition book.
Like Eminem in 8 Mile, composing.
Is this a repetition or a rotation.
Binx Bolling tooling down to the coast
in his MG, pondering Kierkegaard,
boiled seafood, and Dixie beer.
One time Owen came home for Thanksgiving
with two live pheasants.
He always arrives
bearing gifts.
A one-man
Kula ring.
Language is about the exchange of messages.
Economics is about the exchange of goods and services.
Kinship is about the exchange of women.
Totemism is a system of relations.
Clan A is to this animal
as Clan B is to that.
We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
We're passing through Bayou George
en route to Highway 20.

One time Walter Anderson's wife
went down to his studio with
her daughter. They hadn't seen him
in a while. They found a note
that said, "Gone to China."
I'm not that bad. I went
to Nutall Rise. And I told Brenda
the night before that I was going.

I remember driving to Tallahassee
to attend a seminar on drug prevention
coalitions. How to get a substance abuse
or mental health grant if you were only
a nigger preacher. Pretty easy. Just check
faith-based organization in the upper righthand corner.
You don't even have to spell the name of the condition
you plan to treat right. It's the intent that counts.
You deliver voters, we're a big tent.

I ate breakfast in Bristol.
Coffee creamer made from
a horse's foot. Oleo.
They call it spread now.
Whipped spread. No refrigeration necessary.
Milk and butter are unhealthy. Walker Percy said
his favorite restaurant was "The Denny's out by
the interstate." Perhaps he said "the Shoney's."
The above-ground gourmet. Pancakes that lay in your belly
like concrete. What am I--some kind of law officer?
Cooking shows on TV, home makeovers.
Where did I fail? Why am I out here
unemployed, or unemployable?
I can't even use a lower mortgage rate
or horny pills. What would I do with a hard-on?
Take it to the post office and get it canceled?
When I pick up my rejection slips?

Bristol, of course, is where
the Strickland's IGA is,
that asked me for my food stamp ID card
when I bought a loaf of white bread,
a small jar of yellow mustard (no Dijon
or Creole), and a can of Vienna sausages
on my way back to Fort Walton Beach
from a job interview in Tallahassee.
You're overqualfied, you were overpaid,
you might be a threat to your supervisor
and sow discontent among your co-workers,
we don't like the cut of your jib, mister,
you made some wrong life-choices along the way.
I produced the food stamp ID card and a picture ID,
my Florida driver's license, and said, "I didn't cause
this goddamn stagflation, that was Gerald `Swine Flu'
Ford, the pardoner of Richard Nixon."
Watergate lives!

Larry's theory of knee injuries
is not to think about them.
That's how I feel about Hosford,
Florida, where the family car, your father's
Oldsmobile, broke down on the way home from
The Warehouse, in Tallahassee, where we'd gone to hear
Dread Clampitt open for Barefoot Manner. That's also where
you turn off to go down to the Negro Fort, and Tate's Hell Swamp,
with the dwarf cypress trees. A dwarf is bad luck. And Sumatra.