| Welcome back my able bodied brothers, my well proportioned lovers, my grandfathers and grandmothers, nieces, nephews, others, welcome back to the porch and pony, welcome back to the show and phony, welcome back to the run and scream, the number one team, the American dream, the phony, bologna, welcome all you kind and nasty, welcome real and elophantoplasty, well lycanthropes, welcome deposed popes, welcome prostitutes learning the ropes, welcome to you who stand on chairs, wrapped in flags, unawares, amidst trash bags, without any cares, choked by your gags, welcome those who haven't a wish, never ate fish, head shaped like a dish, or a bowl, or a cup, or a lily white saucer, welcome back son, welcome back daughter, welcome, says I, all the children, all the rain, all the anesthetic pain, all the fault without blame, and welcome, I tell you, you wrinklers of time, you runners of grunions, you lovers of loaves, you drinkers of wine, you summer of onions, you drivers of droves, you fine Bunyan stoves, welcome and stay awhile, make yourself at home, make yourself a drink, make yourself think, and think about every word I say, every word I utter, every biscuit I butter, every single sentence I stutter, sit down, on the couch, or if you'd rather, on the floor, sit down, think lofty thoughts, tie your dirty and uncouth locks of smelly greasy hair into intricate Celtic knots, put pots on your head, play dead with the kittens, knit mittens for the incarcerated, for here in my living room all reality is fabricated, all truth is immolated, all touch is fornicated, all loneliness is emasculated, so have a drink, have two, have three, have a special drink made from the sun shoe bee, a lovely sprite unlike any you will ever see, faster than a speeding cheetah and more flexible than a rubber tree, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound on account of his wings and the way he flexes in the morning sun which shines like a brand new shoe bought for only a dollar three, or instead of a drink, a haircut, or a game of Parcheesi, contemplate your navel, contemplate the way the moon wraps itself around the raven, listen to the way the forest spool unravels, tell gullible travelers about swimming pools more or less full of roomy underclothes, stitched out of gold and filled with treasure, pleasurable tidings for leathery markets, hearkening to the weather raining travails on we grinning fools, we few and happy tools, we unlicensed objects of art French and Spanish, used by the many to banish the more, In Dutch lands ringing with German influences, cold like symptoms holding up fences, inflecting sentences about commas and benches, participial phrases mispronounced by lispers, dustbins filled with twisted misters, old fantasy baseball teams begging for attention, misdirected factory outlet stores selling g-men to feds, and old mother hubbard asleep in her bed, and in this place where the who is the what and the why is the when, in this locale were we do it again before it was done, were a verb is a noun and an adjective is a lemon, in this area of alien community, this land of the sea and the stars and the rock and roll cars and the bars made of wood and the understood evil and the cotton bug scars, in this foul climate of confusion, loss, evaporation, sacrifice, desperation, theft, inebriation, robbery, memorization, sameness, allness, one, nothing, in this coated car park, in this dusted garage, in this covered background, in this very hole, we'll teach you how to strut and speak, we'll show you how to preach and bake cookies, we'll give direction on the proper pronunciation of glow grow sow now flow, and when you've had as much as you can take, you bakers, you bankers, you blank truckers, you blanket truckers, you blinking truckers, you piano plinkers, you pink flamingos, you flamenco dancing tequila swilling brie barfing sauerkraut distilling lemonade showering pantyhose building lovers of all things beautiful bright light and free, when you can't see your eyes in front of your face, when each footstep in and of itself is a well bet-upon race, when the hands you used to use to caress your pets are now nothing more than the collateral for debts, when washing is painful and screaming is worse, when your hearse is healthy, when the formaldehyde you hid in your purse has stopped preserving the hippity-hop snob-stopping aspirations of glory and wealth, when you've focused and refocused and triple-time focused on tonguing staccato notes on a theme Mozart abandoned and Bach never knew, when the anti-Semite in all of us is only in you, when there's no more Kool-Aid and the rent has been paid and your best friend can not get laid and the play's the thing and the musical's better and the wetness in your pants is neither sweat stains nor sprinklers nor standing under an air conditioner outside in ninety nine degree weather, then we'll let you go, we'll set you free, we'll change the font, we'll change the typeface, we'll respell all the animals Adam named the same, we'll give an additional ten minutes to find your Bic lighter behind the couch by the dusty cockroach corpses who died choking on Cheetos and Dr. Pepper and too much TV and not enough radio and exactly the right amount of Quake Duke Nukem Doom Atari 2600, we'll let you play trumpet on the highway at dawn, we'll hand you a basket of Easter Eggs, we'll show you the door, bid you farewell, and then we're gone. |