The Adventures of Kudos the Poet - Part V

"I wanted to live in a town where everyone would misspell my name," Kudos sighed. "When you are a teenager, you believe in your indestructibility. Only much later do you learn that you are right. The confirmation comes via airmail, transposing an equinox with drums."

Kudos meant his poetry. "Did you think that anyone could destroy my poetry by firewood, scalding each stanza into ash? Did you think that it hurt me to leave my family? No, it cleansed me. My facelessness cleansed me, and I was so much the stronger for the anonymity. I was so much –"

Kudos broke off and wept, but he failed to realize that I could not deal with adults crying. (That weakness of mine existed "back then" but so recently that I can still taste everyone I had lost – and was losing.) Why was he crying? I used to crave blueberry pancakes whenever anyone wept. I asked Kudos for maple syrup but settled for a hard boiled egg and salad dressing.

"Commerce is humorous," Kudos gasped. "Just when you have purchased a glass dodecahedron, you realize that you no longer need the purity of refracted sunbeams. Then you take it home with you, and you realize that you do need it. Have you ever met the man who invented the windowsill? When you live outdoors, you tend to forget the language of windows."

It had been seven years since Kudos lived indoors. "No one can make a living off poetry," he declared. I smiled while imagining that it must have been the quality of the poetry. It would have been utterly fantastic to envision a society in which poets could not survive off their poems. A low tolerance for myth makes the globe spin faster.