Snippets on a Sunday

Happy Blustery Sunday/Talk Like a Pirate Day! The first of the two poems offered in today's post was written this morning while making breakfast (muesli in almond milk and crispy bacon), and reminded me of a chapter in Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, in which she suggests to panicking young writers that they simply write or talk about their school lunches. She includes samples of some of her own writing on school lunches, and strangely enough, most of her memories do not match up to mine. She remembers bologna being an okay sandwich ingredient, as well as "salami and unagressive cheese." And that, if you had PB and J, it ought to have been made with grape jelly or strawberry jam. I always preferred PBandJ, except when Mums had bought cajun-spiced turkey. But I don't remember a time when orange marmalade wasn't my favorite spread. And bologna?! Kids really prefer that? *despair* *disbelief* It's not important, I'm just wondering if I was that unobservant of the school lunch hierarchy (possible), or if my school experience was just that different (also possible)? Either way, you should read Bird by Bird, it's fantastic.
The three drawings beginning with Chocolate Chip Charlie resulted from a conversation with a coworker about his visit to the Waffle House at 2 in the morning the previous night. I've not had that experience, but I can imagine...Chocolate Chip Charlie is wearing (it's a little faint) a "Life is Good" T-Shirt and eating a smiley face pancake. He's trying so hard to convince himself that life is, indeed, good...but he's an insomniac and paranoid. Sadness. So young, too. I don't have a good idea for Waffle Wanda's character, but she's somehow living in the past and a little "out there" :) Ed Over-Easy is inspired by certain encounters I've had with grumpy breakfast customers who, inevitably, have ordered Over-Easy eggs. These encounters have led me to despise over-easies (the eggs, not necessarily the people who order them). Right now, Ed Over-Easy is fuming because his eggs are taking too long (that's because the poor breakfast cook has had to fry up about 10 eggs just to get his 2 cooked perfectly). Anyway, that's what i imagine 2 a.m. at a Waffle House/IHOP/etc must look like. :) The poems:

Lament on the Theme of School Lunches

Here's a jar of peanut butter,
Here's some jam and bread--
Looks hopeful, yet I have no knife
To see them safely spread.
Sweet PBJ, who lived a time,
But only in my dreams,
I'll have to leave you formless,
Cause I'm making ham and cheese.

A Travelling Poem (sorry the picture loaded sideways!)

Older than a million miles
Travelled one by one--
Stumbled, trotted, turned-around,
Regretted, hoped-for, run.
A pair of boots discarded,
Angry blisters here and there--
But certainty, though walking blind:
The end is not despair.