The Adventures of Kudos the Poet - Part III

Reckless Kudos was no heavyweight. "You do not have to know the beginning of my life," he warned, "to feel for the middle. Sentimental buckaroo, rejoice!"

If objects could be people, I think wool jackets are like Kudos. He meant to call me kid, though he barely understood that cauliflower and confetti no longer made me young. I meant topiaries. It would have been his pity that made me pitiful.

At the age of eighteen, Kudos escaped his home for Wyoming and a mug of coffee. Like every American, he travelled eastward in complete sentences. He vanquished fried bacon with civility. The lassos came without accolades. He traveled very publicly with a gothic marching band on a bus to Jefferson City.

When Kudos told the lead goth-saxophonist that he wrote poems, she looked at him like he was eighteen. "Only children write poems," she intoned. "After poetry, we become who we are meant to be."

Dear Kudos. As if anyone could escape from family. You are born into who you are meant to be, and you have divulged a life after poetry. Now you say you have changed. Now you want to go back. Dear Kudos, I can empathize.