{"id":1671,"date":"2014-05-23T22:02:40","date_gmt":"2014-05-24T05:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/a-mountain.com\/?p=1671"},"modified":"2014-05-23T22:18:22","modified_gmt":"2014-05-24T05:18:22","slug":"poetry-on-a-traffic-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/?p=1671","title":{"rendered":"Poetry at Campbell and Skyline"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Thurday last, I bought some poems at the intersection of Campbell and Skyline. For a buck.<\/p>\n

A man who said to call him the Homeless Guy wore a sandwich board and stood at the traffic island at the Campbell left turn bay. It said \u201cPoems $1 for a few.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time, I was heading west on Skyline, passed Campbell where the Poet was hawking. I passed him by unable to read all the stuff on his sandwich board. I had to drive a fer piece before I could make a U-turn, head east back to Campbell where I waited for the light to turn green and drove yet another fer piece where I could make a U-turn and gain the left turn lane in order to support a local poetry hawker. I thought perhaps they were his poems.<\/p>\n

I waved by dollar bill and he came to my window. He was not a poet. He handed me three pieces of paper. They had been typed, copied and cut into strips. One was: \u201cBiological Reflection by Ogden Nash.\u201d It said:<\/p>\n

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A girl whose cheeks are covered with paint<\/em><\/p>\n

Has the advantage with me over one whose ain\u2019t.<\/em><\/p>\n

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I could have gone happily to my grave without reading that.<\/p>\n

There was another poem by \u201cRobery\u201d Louis Stevenson. Not worth wasting your time. The other was by Robert Service.<\/p>\n

No one is allowed on traffic islands in the city. The council banned people from traffic islands after a newspaper hawker for the Tucson Citizen was run over. It\u2019s one of the many things that killed the newspaper.<\/p>\n

It is unfortunate that I could but interview him but briefly until the traffic light changed. But he didn\u2019t want to talk or give his name. He had the good sense to wear a hat and protect his nose.<\/p>\n

His sandwich board said he had \u201cno downers,\u201d just stuff to brighten your day.\u201d At the bottom of the sandwich board, he wrote, \u201cDo not read while driving.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or not at all \u2014 as the case may be. But I give him credit for promoting cultural enrichment in heavy traffic.<\/p>\n

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  Thurday last, I bought some poems at the intersection of Campbell and Skyline. For a buck. A man who said to call him the Homeless Guy wore a sandwich board and stood at the traffic island at the Campbell left turn bay. It said \u201cPoems $1 for a few.\u201d At the time, I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people-people","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1671"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1677,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1671\/revisions\/1677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}