But that’s Beside the Point (Tornado Warning/ Scientologist Envy/Failed Ant Farm) with a Couple of Vague Seinfeld allusions
Crouched in hallways while the skies
Self-flagellate outside. Heads tucked
Between knees—the better to kiss
Your ass goodbye with, my dear—
Waiting for gargantuan cinder block
To collapse and break our backs,
For a tornado to barrel
Like the world’s largest tumbleweed—
Whiplash cloud, loblolly bark, cinder block,
Parking lot, flesh and tendon tumbleweed—
Down the dusky hall as though running
Late on standardized testing day,
Ready to shred the walls we duck against
Like Pangaea.
Every conversation seems a confessional
By default. The guy beside me spills his guts
About his recent bout of lice.
Very recent. “It’s not so bad,” he says,
“If you think of them as pets.”
Why not exhibits in a zoo? I wonder.
Nose hair lice, toe hair lice, eyebrow lice—
He had them all over; the largest of them
(The most “grizzled,” he said) had lice
Of their own, the few sprouts of hair
Twisting like defunct question marks
From their knobby heads. At this point I note
His hat is actually just a giant scab
Where louse nibbles congealed during
The healing process. Then his eyes bulge
And he doffs this hat, but seemingly without
Volition—he botches the doff, the hat lifts
From his hand and slips through the slippery air
And lands on my head instead.
I turn to the guy beside me, whose levitation
I attribute to his spirituality. A well-known Scientologist,
He carries not a backpack
But a briefcase everywhere; it occupies
Its own space on the floor beside
Him, even as the poorest kid in class
Crouches in the middle of the hall,
Unprotected by the cinder block walls—
He’ll have to content himself with
A death that doesn’t involve flattening.
“Like my hat?” I ask; but gusts, not words,
Budge his lips.
“Do Scientologists carry business cards?”
“Whoosh! Whirr! Crash! Bam!”
I worry that he’s just cast a Scientologist spell
On me, but ask one last question
Nonetheless. “Why haven’t you ever tried
Converting me? I’d make a damned fine Scientologist.
When I tried growing an ant farm
In a tennis ball container the whole tube
Molded over but I cleaned it out real
Nice afterward. Odd thing is that
There were no ant corpses inside.”
I find myself screaming that last part.
That’s when I notice the bull’s-eye
On his shirt, “tornado was here”
Screen-printed beside it, and the scab hat
Makes a beeline for it, and a congress
Of lice nosedive for it, and I realize
The guy to my right lied about the success
Of my treatment. The walls rip apart,
Every open mouth becomes a siren
At varying pitch. And so, dear reader,
Did I narrowly avoid head lice as a teenager.
When asked what he toted around
In his briefcase, the Scientologist answers,
“Crackers.”
