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I gotta quit my job
I gotta quit my job
I gotta quit my job
I gotta quit my job
I gotta quit my job
What’s at the bottom of the ocean
Nobody knows
We can’t breathe underwater
All the guys who tried
Drownded :(
So there’s no telling
What’s down there
Could be another ocean
For all we know
More dense and dark than water
Full of alien life
Slithering through the inky black
Could be there’s monsters
Giant hungry monsters
That eat whales in one bite
Slurp squids like spaghetti
Feed on fish by the school
Could be there’s
A big scary face down there
Smiling and staring up at you
I hope not
But we just don’t know
We can’t get down there
It’s too far to swim
It’s too dark to see
Nobody knows
What’s at the bottom of the ocean
Nobody knows
The woeful story
Of a man who drank
Two beers
He sat down at the table
Drank one beer
And then a second
And everything became easy
As if before there had been
Inches and inches of skull
Between his brain and body
Now he was right in the drivers seat
No forethought no anxiety
Just the thrill of two beers
He was better at pool
He was better at talking
He was better at everything
But then he had a third beer
And it all went away
Now he was just drunk
And that can be fun
But not transformative
Not in the way two beers is
Two beers is a sacred sacrament
Taps you into the lifeblood
Brings you into the world
Three beers is nothing
Nothing but what beer is made of
He got caught up
In the beauty of two beers
And in his hubris
He flew too close
To the third beer
And came crashing back down
Take heed of this warning
Remember the power
Of drinking exactly two beers
I’d be playing guitar
And think
I want to be the best at guitar
Or likewise
The best at drawing
The best at writing
The best of all at something
Well maybe that’s a dumb thing
A thing not worth thinking
Out of all the stuff in the world
Out of all the thing-doers
You’d like to be the best?
How boring
How neat and tidy
Number one up on top
Being a life is all about
And here’s where i say
What it’s all about:
Trying to cram a universe-sized thing
Inside of a head-sized thing
Making peace with the chaos
And riding it out
So in keeping with chaos
I think it’s best to be just okay
To whittle with mediocrity
Rising and falling
Somewhere in the midst of it all
It is fun to be sloppy
And there can be no best
Not at this not at nothing
That would require order
Presupposing hierarchy
Which there can not be
Not down here in the mess
Breathe in and out slowly
Take the compressed universe
Out from inside your head-vice
And funnel it into creation
Write some words
Play some strings
Draw some lines
You want to be the best at creation?
Not even god could do that
So he made all the creatures
To crawl around and create
Of which you are one
Of which there can be no best
Of these disparate desperate
Claw-footed creatures
Moaning into the night
Howling at the empty sky
The best thing to do
Is to join in
There is no best note in a song
No best voice in a choir
No best cell in the body
I’d be playing guitar and think
Somehow this is indicative
Of a larger eternal struggle
That i cannot play that chord
I would not rob myself of that beauty
To be the best at anything
The body is a vehicle
Self expands out
From the folds of the mind
To head and chest
Arms hands legs and feet
This is You now
And if you climb on your bike
You can reach out further
You can not feel them
But the wheels become you
Your sense of self includes them
Part bike part body
Bike prosthesis
This is You now
And it seems it wouldn’t end
If you put your mind in a machine
Miles of wires and metal
Tendrils reaching outward
The mind would understand
Push out its walls
All the way out
Until it reached the world
And all those systems
Sensors and networks
Like fingers on your mind-hand
This is You now
The mind and the self
Are malleable things
Your body an interface
Connective tissue
Between the world
And the thing that understands it
I made a new grandpa
He’s a sweet old man
Who loves his wife
His kids and grandkids
He likes sitting on the porch
He likes closing his eyes
And listening
He likes to drink beer
He likes his two old dogs
Which he feeds from the table
He’s working in the shed today
He runs his old worn hands
Along the edge of the wood
Before he flips the saw on
And cuts it to size
He takes his time
There is no rush at all
He is a patient man
Who thinks before speaking
He loves watching the sunrise
Dew on the grass in the morning
He doesn’t understand you
But that only makes him smile
He says roots are meant to sprout
Grow away from the seed
Then he hums a song
That you never heard
He doesn’t seem to notice
It just comes to him naturally
Behind his big gray mustache
I made up this grandpa
But that doesn’t mean
He isn’t real
I set a weight down on my keyboard
And crawl back into bed
I’ve opened all the windows
So i can listen to the rain
I’m watching Columbo
And drawing in my notebook
I have created peace today
And the fools are paying me for it
Ha!
Ducky teaches
At the School of Infinite Liberation
She tells me
As long as there is one man
With hands bound
We are all prisoners
As long as any animal
Is born in a cage
We will all be savage beasts
We’re always as far
As we ever have been
From freedom and justice
We can not be human
She says
Until we have paid our debt
Ducky says
She’ll never marry her wife
Because it is a sin
To appeal to authority
Her wife smiles while she’s ranting
Pacing back and forth
At the house party
Chuckling at the correlation
Between drinks consumed
And the volume of her voice
She carries her home
Runs fingers through her hair
Laying in bed staring at the ceiling
She whispers
Ducky I love you
I’ll see you in the morning
Ducky doesn’t work
She says work is for The Man
She’s always taking about The Man
She started saying it ironically
Years and years ago
Now it’s just vocabulary
She cuts her own hair
And when she messes up
Her wife fixes it
Kisses her on the forehead
And gets hair in her mouth
Sputters to spit it out
Ducky starts spitting too
Because it’s fun to spit she says
We’re spitting at The Man now
Taking back what’s ours
Ptoo! Ptoo!
I’m all out of spit
I gotta borrow yours c’mere
Then they run around the house
Cackling and spitting
Ducky says
It’s a long long way off
But we’re going to win
She promised me it’s true
That in the end there is justice
All of this will end happy
Sooner or later
That’s the way of things
Ducky smiles and slaps my back
She says don’t you worry pal
We’re making progress
We just gotta keep on forever
It’s easier than stopping
Then she grabs my face
And tries to make it smile
With handfuls of cheek she says
There that’s better
Which makes me laugh
And i smile for real
She says
Keep your chin up
Your eyes open
Your arms wide
Your knees bent
And we’ll get through this
It’s gonna be alright
It’s all gonna be alright
That’s what Ducky says