Whether you're alive or dead,
You still will have to make your bed,
Pick up after yourself,
Put the books back on the shelf,
Dust the floor,
Feed the poor,
Watch the snow fall
And call to God.
We've been prodded,
Poked, yoked,
Choked, and joked about
So long, without a doubt.
But history pours down the spout,
and the same slack-jawed lout
stands straining blankly,
and his hair grows rankly,
and you–stay!
Say what you will,
Here at the window sill
Or wherever you're prepared to jump.
Like it or lump it,
The snow falls. So
Recall snatches of Edgar Alan Poe,
Something about the eternal crow
And the ravening maelstrom.
Wherever you are from,
Friend, take my hand,
Have some canned
Pineapples.
How one grapples
With the issues of the day!
Weep into multiple tissues, and, say,
Is that a snuff box you're got there?
Yes, it's full of air,
Of fire, of earth and rock and wire
And I fished it from the clear stream,
Switching its tail amidst the bream.
Don't crowd, boys,
This white powder
Will make you sneeze, louder
Than any new-born, puling
Child at the dueling
Within him.
How different life looks
At the edge of the galactic rim.
There, all earth looks like a hymn
Or a herd of elephants
Crashing through the savannah,
Trampling the manna.
And you wander about
In your pajamas, pink
With little figures of llamas
And ovoid panoramas
Of an entire conjecture
Packed within a lugubrious lecture,
As you chow down in the refectories
Upon sandwiches light as heaven.
Eventually, you will get caught
And the good that you bought
Will stick to your bones,
Mr. Jones.
So you may as well
Ring the bell,
Let the swell
Of the sea slap
And rap
Upon your seaworthy skiff,
If
You dare float upon a sea
Of possibility. So hope
Or mope
Upon the beach,
Listen to the seagulls screeching
Over offal.
The buffalo are extinct,
You may be thinking, we've been jinxed
And parboiled,
Soiled and rotten.
What on
Earth more can we do?
Man, we can man the lifeboats,
Eat whole grain oats,
Rub angels' wings
And other invisible things
Into the snow,
Grow an inch a day,
Pray for rain,
Strain our brain
And then
Like a master of Zen
Stand upon a mountain top
Where all has stopped,
Before history began,
Where the blood of the ram ran.
Just one blank slate
And a cornucopia overflowing onto a plate
And the promise
Of an armistice.
Now take this pinch of snuff.
It's heady stuff.
It clears the wind
And rescinds the dust of millennia.
Many a time, I've dipped my nappy
Head into the sappy wind
And wiped my eyes in honey.
One: ease your mind,
Two: find inner peace
Three: may I introduce you to my niece?
Just release the handbrake
On that car.
It's gotten pretty far
To here.
If you just don't jeer
At the dusty steering wheel,
The out of shape muffler
And the gruff lurching of the gears
For the past three or four thousand years.
I think you'll get a smile
As it whips about this island
Beneath the divine eye.
A hurricane is blowing up, and my
Chilblains are acting up.
So come on in for supper:
And stay awake
And make out
Like a bandit.
I've got to hand it to you,
There among the mimosa plants:
You sure know how to dance!