we will be given arrows

we have grown old.

yesterday we had water.

today, we drink whiskey

and talk of capitalism,

social politics, and the common man.

yesterday, we were

the bottom rung

of a step stool that

never hurt anyone.

tomorrow, we will be

shakers of mountains,

movers of the earth,

at the helm

of a terrible machine we

once were only

a cog inside.

we will be given arrows

backed by guarded gold

and where we choose

to fling them will

tell us just what kind of

men we are.

we have been given the keys

to this city we live in,

babylon of the earth,

and oh Lord let us not

open with them

pandora's box.

arachnids of progress

they're out there, on the horizon,

arachnids of progress sticking their

straight spindly mile-long

metal legs right down into the ocean floor.

off the easy shaded coast of

carpinteria, santa barbera, they sit

poised and sucking the crude lifeblood

of our economy from far beneath

the whelming flood.

right here, in front of children

skipping through the wake in may's new breeze

and couples cradling each other

fully clothed in the sand

and people who would have been called dreamers

forty years ago left scribbling on

scraps of paper, alone by life's gracious,

graceful hand.

there they are, toiling away grey

hours of daylight all in a row -

one two three four five six seven

frozen steel insects forged

by greed, necessity, and surely

very calloused hands.

they light at night, several globes per platform

in the distance warning us

in a way quite opposite of lighthouses,

"don't venture out to sea, we're

here. you needn't be, and we'll

be just fine

without you."

falling asleep this
night in a ceremony

shirt and cut off shorts

the graduate's on television tonight

the graduate's on television tonight

and i don't care. i'm sick of it,

tired of romance that looks how

people want it to look.

good God i was mucked down

in that bog for too long.

about twenty years too long

to be honest.

the graduate's on television tonight

and it's reminding me how stupid

i used to be. stupid enough to make

choices for all the wrong reasons.

good God i was stupid,

stupid and mean.

the graduate's on television tonight

and i don't want your company, dustin.

not tonight. because tonight i feel

like just another notch

on a gun somewhere

north of here, just another name

on a what's-getting-long list.

good God i was a hard fought notch

and a name written in calligraphy

on that list.

the graduate's on television tonight

and for once in a long while, i feel

like dreaming myself to drinky sleep.

good God, save me from me.

that one

i wrote alot of things

about that one.

beautiful things and heartsick

things and hopeful things

and horrible things too.

some were okay but most

weren't okay in any way but

they're all still here, laying

around like a bunch of old

dive suits lined up side by side

in a navy warehouse - the kind with

the big round bronze helmets

and tubes that go up to

the surface for air and

monstrous boots for trodding

around ocean floors and

sunk submarines and the like

but unlike that congregation of

ghastly obsolete apparatuses,

those things i wrote aren't worth

the ink i spent on them

now.

i guess it's time to start over,

again.