ducks float on the lake

ducks float on the lake
lily pads gently shudder in their wake
peaches grow on the trees
this is the paradise where i come from

if summer is one long day
then it is morning
and i am ready for a swim
the water is cool

carry your belongings
from your dwelling
we go together to this place
you dream awake now

the sun seats itself at earth's table
then a gear rolls away
its mechanism has no secrets
everything is intended

this bar and grill closes in half an hour
drunkenly adjust your frame
civilization is irony for those into the world
the boat is a drawing above your head

what age is this asked you?
i have a tendency to forget this age is still happening
have not been aware of it since the times i was young and drunk
thank god i am young and drunk

another beach beckons
yet i haven't swam yet
my skin is a crackling hide
it is burning me, my inside is thrust outwards as such

you are called upon to command
can you find an eternal office?
this is not the place for you
the young siren suggests
indicating the lines

New Baby Products

Neal and Betsy always laughed with each other when they drove by the New Baby Products sign. When they first moved to Birmingham, it seemed like everyone laughed at New Baby Products. At the restaurant where Neal bussed, all of the waiters had their own carefully crafted jokes about the place. Some of them were about the sign, with its predictable baby blue type and pink baby. Tim, the leader of the waiters, would guffaw like he did and say "it's like they're saying, "we have something for every baby. Every Crack Baby!" The other waiters laughed, but Neal just bussed in the background.

The next year, New Baby Products wasn't as funny. Birmingham got colder than Florida. Betsy looked thin and pale. She was so pretty when they left Florida. Now, even when Neal tried to joke about New Baby Products, Betsy just looked away. One time she said, "Neal, they sell cheap baby clothes. People need cheap baby clothes. It's not funny. It's sad."

Neal said, "We'll never have to shop there."

Neal started to think of his grandfather, and the bib he wore before he died and was too old to chew properly. They couldn't afford to place him in a home, so they bought him a bib. At twelve, Neal never considered where the bib came from. It was just a bib. Now he recalled the cookie monster graphic on it, and how his grandfather spittled on the cookie monster. Neal's mother wiped the bib now and again, but the spittle would often grow too heavy for the bib and drip down onto the grandfather's shirt and crotch. Grandfather would swipe at it, but eventually it sat where it fell, stagnating until Neal's mother came to wipe it away. Neal saw it all out of his peripheral vision. He didn't like his grandfather's spittle. It was easier to pretend it wasn't there.

This is what happens when you drive to Wichita.

He is very good in the kitchen. That is why I am driving. There’s no way I could cook, at least for more than just us two, so that’s why I am driving. Customers would stop coming. I can’t help but drive, it is the best thing. There is no better thing. That is what I mean by best thing. Not that it is just a good, but that it is the only. That is why I drive, and that is why I put in the tape to cut up the quiet, because quiet is too sad and slow and this tape is all about the best way to self-actualize, which is to say be happy. We are quiet, but the tape is loud so that makes the time pass, and two hours is a lot of time to pass. White line, white line, white stripe. Two of them. No passing now, even if we could. The tape is switching sides.