Chickens of the Road Literary Division:
Why Did That Chicken Cross the Road? Literary giants weigh in.
William Faulkner:
Faced at the road, as he was and was all man with the eternal decision and quest of his existence and theirs concurrently, Lilliputian in both scope and featherness, beaked, extruding droppings, stenches of verbena, all the while and only to him alone because he alone knew it as it was, and only to him a supercilious symbol of myopic minimalism, smothered as it was by a nasty campus suicide and faded Faustian foistings of feigned agrarian glory that he remembered, mute as the sound and fury of idiots, torn from the Absalom artifices and orifices, castigated, castrated and calcified Snopesian landscape, a postage stamp of the chicken’s banal barnyard reality, now gone with the wind of pedestrian moonlight and roses cavalier prose, but to rise again, not only enduring and surviving, but somehow pretentiously, pre-ordinated, predetermined by destiny, the fowl fulminations that instigate an eternal evolutionary descent into banality and the opaqeness of reivers, as evidenced by a large yellow car at a whorehouse, and a return to mere soldier’s pay with glories in between the intervening created sheets, filled with ink, therein, upon that ancient typewriter. Justly fortified, the chicken moved. She pulled on her purple robe and stepped resolutely across the barnyard to her shack, leaving the gravel road behind, as well as hot biscuits on the hearth for the gravy of mind, matter and the eternal circumstance of finding the road sacrosanct to all preconceived notions, quaint though Quentin once thought they were, stuffing his hands in his pockets strongly and plundering, stomping with incalcified guilt down the Yoknapatawpha dirt road, which had been the ripped and plundered hundred acres of his Sutphen sourced soul, seemingly to him anyway in his thoughts of her, then him, them and theirs together as it had been, simply the rudimentarian ruminations within and upon this alley in which he peed, which rigorized his demand for Sartorian splendor, Compson compromise and the burping of hamlet homebodies, cretins amock in dusty, darkie courthouse intrusions, smouldering and bursting inside him, a saturation of sanctuary from a lost and prejudiced and putrefied region where Christmas was once called Joe, corn was compromised into an intrusive cob and Absalom ached with the artifices of ill-advised angst and aborted anticipations. And yet, by now, all chickens of the necessary parameters had been sacrificed upon the altar of Sunday Dinners, with an appalling floor full of Snopes chicks growing vociferously to replace them, crass over class. As I lie dying by the roadside, I hear the chicken pot simmering. I see a light in August. And yet it is but February on a broken watch, hearing a coffin being nailed together by illiterate hillbillies, and I forever live in an amber-colored and verbena-splashed past. I remain Nobel…and prized. The chicken remains undecided for the creature only has a blackeyed pea for a brain.
Shakespeare:
To cross or not to cross, that is the question, and tis the only path to the Nunnery, where even now blank-eyed Ophelia strolls to the back garden with cracked corn and a wan, bird-like expression to feed such peckers as the forlorn chicken standing by the whizzing traffic. Alas, poor chicken, the interstate witches brew toil and trouble. Yon comes greedy Shylock driving a truck filled with a choking mass of chickens, soon to become broilers and fryers, beyond the knife, beyond the butchery of man. But in the end, we can only admit it’s much ado about nothing. Shrews cannot be tamed. Fowl play cannot be abrogated. And eventually we must all cross the road. For Ophelia can’t hurl that corn across that highway. It’s four lane now. And the hunger within our bowels will always be filled with bowls of bitter brew before any higher consciousness we will be coming to. Hark, Rosenkurds, I see an apparition now, a specter of this ungodly chow! Forsooth, it’s f**king beans again. We must quit having lunch at the Nunnery! And <gasp> you say Romeo seasoned the beans!? Dreaded curse of the ages, the silly stylings of goofy young lovers, cursed and driven by impestuosity and hormonal whirlwinds, all scented with musk. Argh! I die now, and do my part in leaving the stage littered with corpses. As my vision fades, I see even now the glorious chicken dining in a green garden with my beloved Ophelia. We remain forever, in the words of Simon, crazy after all these years. I sleep, forsooth to have nightmares of blood and feathers on the highway. Death awaits us all unless we run like scared chickens.
Ernest Hemingway:
They called him Chick. He stood there. He looked at the road. A moveable feast. The sun rises over it too. But this time, he had gone out too far. The bell tolls not for thee, but for my big tuna. Spoiled like tuna fish salad. Lost in the back of the refrigerator of life. Cold life itself. My life crumpled around me like a hit man’s suit and the spoiled sandwich he carried in his pocket. Life’s pockets are forever soiled as they are dark to the light. It is all bull, revealed my shit detector. Ole. I will kill the bull and fish. I will sail to the Keys. Eat Jerk Chicken at Sloppy Joe’s. That is where it happened. Two strangers sat at the bar. Oh, shit, he thought. The detector had failed as had man himself. Herself too. He should have stayed at the road. By the Stop Sign. Now he said a silent farewell to arms. It was her arms he longed for now. He felt the last second with some remorse. The bullets ripped into him. The remorse grew. He was bleeding. The chicken was gone. He was left to die alone. He looked up at the barstool. It was raining too. The straw roof of life has holes. Butts had sat upon a stool he now could not reach with bloody fingers. The digits of the millions of touches in our lives. Had he been a soft touch? Or was he hard-boiled like an egg? He would lie wounded now without the answers, and look for a great mountain in his mind There must be snow upon it. It was life. It was all a snow job. He wanted it to be real, for once. He longed for the Chick he used to be, blasting elephants, hauling up fresh fish. His wounds were healing now. But the Cuban cook here would only bring beans. He knew only beans. Mankind only knows beans. Killing my joy …Oh! And then two strangers walked into the room. They stood there. He had left his shit detector on the mountain. The cook stood there holding a steaming pot of beans. They shot him. He fell dead. I would have done so myself, he thought. In some other moment. In some other time. Then they turned to him. The gun felt cool to his grip. Then it went off. Theirs went off too. He wished he was back at Sloppy Joe’s more than ever. Before all this started. He would have a beer and watch the chickens. They strolled freely over the island. They crossed roads. They crossed bridges. They were stupid and sometimes were killed. Like me. Now. At this moment. Today. The gunfight raged. Life goes on. Death too. I arouse myself and see a chicken make squat. It is on the floor. I take the beer bottle by its neck. I draw it back. I take aim. The chicken pecks something. I let it fly.
Dr. Seuss:
Did this fowl go across this road? To lay a green egg, as I’ve been told? And why did this chicken go on the lam? To chase the cat that stole the ham? Hmmmmm?
Jean Paul Sartre:
One must indeed ask why. A crossing would have no meaning, a symbolic gesture at best. She should sit instead and contemplate fate and the meaning of gravel and weeds by the side of that symbolically blacktopped thread. These are the roots of alienation. I pull up a little yellow flower and contemplate its fate that I have just produced of my own lethal free will. Will someone weed me in time? Other seeds are smothered under the black line. Shall I feel alienated because of it? Why the hell not? Since hell does not exist, but only its embodiments.
Charles Bukowski:
The road is nothing. I will explore the Ditch in its deepest, darkest, stinkiest, most depraved form, great divisive gashes across the spectrum of everyday passages. I will have a bedroom scene featuring a large naked chicken and Charlie Sheen.
From the CD “Grinning Through Apocalypse” and the serio-comic volume, “Sauntering Through Apocalpyse” on Amazon. Free MP3’s and E-books at www.jimclevelandauthor.com