I went to get groceries this morning during the Crones And Codgers’ Early Shopping Hour. Sitting in my car after the acquisition, alcohol swabbing the steering wheel, my car key, the credit card I used, my phone, everything I had touched with my hands in the store before I threw my gloves away in the parking lot, I started thinking about the experience.
An N-95-masked woman had come up to me at one point—and unless someone is actively laughing, with those masks on, we all look terribly earnest—and asked where I had found the toilet paper on the bottom rack of my shopping cart. I told her it was in the cleaning products aisle, and there weren’t many left. She u-turned and beelined for the cleaning products aisle. This was after an unmasked, elderly guy who assiduously kept his distance had asked me the same question.
Sitting in the parking lot, it all struck me as bizarre and extraordinary. And I wanted to mark it in some way. I had a real Wile E. Coyote moment, light bulb going off over my head and all. I decided to leave a little impromptu poem for subsequent shoppers.
The execution was suboptimal. I always carry Post-Its with me, but I would have liked a larger size for this project. And I had to scrounge around on the floor of my car to find a pen. The only one that worked had red ink—not the color I would have chosen. And when I was holding my Post-It in the parking lot and putting on a new pair of gloves and my mask because, dag gummit, I was going in there again!, the edges of the Post-It got crinkled and folded over. So the product was imperfect.
But the high was unmistakable. I had so much fun marching straight to the toilet paper and leaving my little crinkled Post-It!
I’ve decided to make a modest Guerrilla Poetry kit with different-sized Post-Its and a couple of pens, so I’m ready next time.
Poetry, song, rap: We’ve all got something to say. Del The Funky Homosapiens’s cut, “Virus,” from his 2000 release Deltron 3030 seems awfully prescient right now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrEdbKwivCI