Bob Hicok - Duke lyrics

He was hit back of the head for a haul of $15, a Diner's Club Card and picture of his daughter in a helmet on a horse tethered to a pole that centered its revolving universe. Pacing the halls, he'd ask for a blow job he didn't want. The ward's new visitors didn't know this request was all the injury had left him to say, and would be shamed or pissed, a few hitting him as he stood with his mouth slightly open and large frame leaning in. His wife divorced him for good and blameless reasons. He would not be coming home to share his thoughts on film and weather, or remembering her any longer than it took to leave a room. He liked ham. Kept newspapers in drawers and under his bed, each unread page hand-pressed flat. And when it snowed he leaned into one of the sealed, unbreakable windows, a cheek to the cool gla** as he held his fingers over his mouth and moaned low and constant like the sound of a boat on the far side of a lake. When he died they cut him open to see how his habits had been rewired and so tightly looped. Having known him they were afraid of what can happen when you cross the lot to the office or pull up to a light and thump the wheel as you might any hour. If you stare at the dyed and beautiful cross sections of a brain, it's natural to wonder how we extract the taste of coffee or sense of a note accurately found and held on an oboe from this bramble. On Duke's slides they circled the regions of blight which explain why almost all behavior we recognize as human was lost, but not why a man who'd curl into a ball like a caterpillar when barely touched, could only ask for s**, for intimacy, for the very thing he could least accept and lived twelve years without, no embrace or caress, no kiss on the lips before sleep, until he died in the lounge looking out on winter sky that seemed eager to snow all day but didn't.