Chapter Two

Friday morning, the day after Thanksgiving, Ben rolled out of bed, put on his robe, and walked down to the kitchen. His parents were already there.

Elizabeth sat at the table, grinding coffee beans with a mortar and pestle. This way took longer but she thought it made the coffee taste better. Max sat next to her, hunched over a cutting board, chopping up turkey.

“Want some of this omelet?” he asked Ben.

“Sure.”

“Well, you’re not getting any. If you’re gonna waste my money and drop out of college, you don’t get any Thanksgiving leftovers.”

Ben looked over to Elizabeth. Maybe she would use her veto powers like she had yesterday.

“Your father’s right. It’s not a holiday anymore.”

“What am I supposed to eat?”

Max looked up at him. “You don’t need food. You’re a starving artist.”

“There’s peanut butter and Jelly,” Elizabeth said. “Make yourself a sandwich.”

Ben got out the peanut butter and jelly and threw a couple pieces of white bread on a plate. He sat down at the table and started slapping peanut butter on the bread.

Elizabeth continued grinding the coffee beans. Max looked at the turkey he had sliced, decided the pieces weren’t small enough, and started cutting them into smaller pieces.

“I’m giving you a tooth cleaning today,” Max said.

“It hasn’t been six months yet.”

“Who knows when you’ll get into a dentist’s office again? You’ll be so busy in the coal mine, you won’t have time to get your teeth cleaned.”

Ben got the awful image in his head of Marathon Man, Laurence Olivier performing unnecessary root canals on Dustin Hoffman without anesthetic. Is it safe?

“Will you use Novocain?”

Max laughed wryly. “You’re the one who wanted to be a poet. You have to experience great pain to be a great artist.”



The weather was unusually mild for the day after Thanksgiving, so Ben spent the morning in the park, sitting under a tree, writing a poem about poetry. Very Post-Modern.

When it was time for his dental appointment, he walked over to his father’s dental clinic. The door was unlocked and Ben walked into the reception area. The receptionist wasn’t there. She had the day off. Max never saw patients on the day after Thanksgiving.

Ben walked down the hallway to the office. He could smell the faint odor of drilled teeth.

He stepped into the office and was surprised to see his whole family sitting there. Philip sat next to the open window. Next to him, Logan fidgeted with a magazine. Max and Elizabeth sat on the sofa. A man Ben didn’t recognize sat in a folding chair. He had a weathered face with thin lips and wore a colorful wool sweater.

Ben looked at Logan and Philip. They avoided his gaze.

“You’re getting your teeth cleaned too?”

Philip stared out the window. Logan set the magazine down and stared at its cover. Oprah Magazine. Oprah was on the cover.

Max cleared his throat. “Have a seat.” He gestured to the reclining patient’s chair, covered in old plastic.

Ben walked over to it and sat down.

The man Ben didn’t recognize stood up, walked over to him, and spoke in a gravelly voice.

“Ben, you’re not getting your teeth cleaned today. We just told you that to get you here.”

Ben drew in an angry breath. He might have known Max couldn’t just give him a straight tooth cleaning.

“Ben, this is an intervention,” the man said.

Ben blinked.

“For who?”

“For you.”

Ben sighed and slowly shook his head. “I don’t do drugs and I’m not an alcoholic.”

“You’re a poetry addict.”

“Just because I write poetry doesn’t mean I’m on drugs.”

“You’re addicted to poetry. It’s taken over your life. It’s making you drop out of school.” The man grabbed his folding chair, turned it around, and sat on it backwards, with his legs straddling the backrest. He leaned toward Ben, staring intensely. “My name is Pat Henderson. I’m an intervention counselor. Your parents asked me to be here today to help you through this. I specialize in interventions for people addicted to poetry.”

Ben sat upright. “I’m not addicted.”

“You don’t need to feel ashamed. There’s no stigma to it. I used to be a poetryholic myself.”

“You were a poetryholic?”

“You looked surprised, but it’s true. I started off with those little refrigerator magnets with the words on them, composing little poems when I went to get the milk. Then I got into haikus. Before long I only spoke in iambic pentameter, in rhyming couplets. It cost me my wife, my kids, my job, my self-respect. Everything.”

“I’m not a poetryholic,” Ben said firmly.

“You’ve been able to fool a lot of people with your free verse style, not rhyming or having a strict meter. That’s what addicts do. They’re charming. But you can’t fool me. I’m a fellow addict. I know all your tricks. It doesn’t have to rhyme to be poetry.”

Ben threw a victorious look at Max. “I told you it didn’t have to rhyme.”

“I love you,” Max said, his voice shaking. “And I don’t agree with what you’re doing. I’m not gonna let you throw your life away.”

“I don’t like it when you floss at the dinner table but I’m not holding an intervention over it.”

“Ben,” Pat said. “Your family’s going to tell you how your poetry has hurt them. You don’t have to say anything. Just listen.”

“I haven’t hurt them.” He turned to Philip. “Have I hurt you with my poetry?”

Philip returned his stare with wounded eyes.

“We lost the Turkey Bowl because of your poetry.”

“We didn’t lose. We won.”

“Well we don’t have the trophy.”

“You’ll never find it,” Max cackled gleefully. “It’s hidden in the last place you’d ever suspect.”

“Why don’t you just stay in school?” Elizabeth shouted out, her voice like a pencil snapping. “You can volunteer at a homeless shelter part-time if you want to help the oppressed. You can still write poetry.”

“No.” Pat shook his head. “He can never write another poem. Addiction is for life. It’s like syphilis. It never really goes away. I’ve been clean for twelve years and I still go to PA meetings.”

PA? Ben wondered.

“The Palestinian Authority?” he asked. Maybe this was how terrorists recruited now.

Pat shook his head. “Poets Anonymous. It’s a twelve step program.”

Ben imagined what a Poets anonymous group would be like. Recovering poets sitting in a circle of folding chairs, drinking bad coffee from Styrofoam cups, meeting in a church basement. Actually, a church might not like the PA thing; they wouldn’t want the Palestinian Authority in their basement. The meeting would be in the basement of a mosque. The sound of Muslim prayers would be heard coming from overhead. Ben would stand up and say, “My name is Ben and I’m a poetryholic.”

“Hi Ben!” they would all say in unison.

“It’s been one month since my last poem,” he would say, like he had poet’s block.

Ben didn’t like this at all, not one bit. He jumped up and pointed his finger in Pat’s face.

“You’re the Taliban! You’re trying to ban poetry!”

For some reason, when Ben got really angry, he always thought about Islam.

“Ben, we can help you. I work at a treatment center for people like you.”

Ben looked at his parents.

“You’re sending me to boot camp?”

“It’s not boot camp” Pat interjected. “It’s a rehabilitation center. We already have a spot reserved for you.”

“You’re sending me to poetry rehab?”

“You’ll like it, Ben. It’s out in the woods, rustic and peaceful.”

Ben considered. It would probably be just like camp. He wondered what the other campers would be like and why they (or anyone for that matter) would go to a poetry rehab. Maybe a court ordered them to go there. It sounded like something Judge Judy would do.

It would be a good place to get away from everything, work on his poetry. Peaceful and quiet, out in the woods. But then again, he didn’t want to be the kind of poet who wrote about flowers blooming and leaves falling from trees; the kind of poetry his father would probably like if his father liked poetry. He wanted to write about dirt and grit and grime. There might be dirt out in the woods, but Ben didn’t think he would find much grit and grime there. Besides, they’d probably be watching him to make sure he didn’t write poetry. Not the most creative atmosphere.

"There’s a room ready for you at the center,” Pat said. “You have to leave right now.”

“I still have a month left of school.”

“So what?” Max shouted. “You were dropping out anyway. What do you care?”

“I packed a bag for you.” Elizabeth pulled out an old beaten up suitcase from behind the couch she sat on. “Everything you need is in it. All your clothes and spare contact lenses.”

Blood pulsed to Ben’s forehead. She had been digging through his underwear drawer while he was out in the park writing poetry.

“I didn’t put in any socks,” she said. “You won’t need them. They have slippers for you to wear at the hospital.”

Ben walked over, gripped the handle of the suitcase, and looked in his mother’s eyes.

“I’m not giving up poetry.”

He picked up the suitcase, turned around, and walked to the door.

“Bye,” he said, not looking back.

“Ben, don’t go,” Pat shouted. “Do you really want to see what it looks like when a poetry addict hits rock bottom?”

That stopped Ben in the doorway. He remembered the unwashed homeless man who always stood on the corner by Burger King. What was it he was always mumbling to himself? Was it poetry?

Ben didn’t care. If he was an addict, then so be it. If he was going down, he would go down hard. He would be the poetic equivalent of Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas. “I came here to poem myself to death.” That would be his mantra.

He walked out the door. He was a poet now, and didn’t need to be around such little-minded people.


February 11, 2007