Tennessee Titanium

"Suffering Jukebox" is the song
I tore a page from the 1964 Dyersburg phonebook
and scribbled the grocery list on it

Things have really gone downhill in this place
Before there were streets and trash on the curb
and now it's a toy strewn lawn
and the trash is inside

When people put the trash outside
we all win

When you ride with style
you don't ride with Kim Jong Il

When you wear Mickey Mouse ears
time still goes

"What is a ray?"

I’ve been sad since I was little, I’ve been bad since I was little, I’ve been not there forever, I’ve been outcast in weather, I’ve been found in the ditch, I have a daddy who is rich, but money doesn’t matter when you want to kill yourself. I had flowers o’er me, way up high in the tree and a thousand fuzzy seeds replaced my hair like disease, when the bell tower had gonged it’s very last ba-gong-gong-gong, I will wake up in the sunlight I will sit up, I will ramble on the hilltops of the Basin on the creekbeds that are crusted by a thousand bad pollutants and a dust so soft and fine; in the orchard there’s a fragrance that is lovely and so splendid, all my cares will wash away and the earth will softly tremble underneath my booted feet, underneath your floral dress, the fissures will gape open and the bad smells will come forth; everybody will be fainting like a druid ceremony when they became so ecstatic that the high priest had no more to say but when he fell over he was entranced by the moss on the edge of some shape that they thought would bring them luck, or misfortune on the bad guy because there’s always a bad guy and the world is white from space, and the men are white in space; I wonder if there’s a man or a carcass, rather, that has been shooting like a ray on a math board in a classroom in the outer edges of space, or if he fell into an orbit and was devoured by some planet, burned up in the atmosphere, or was he just merely jolly, with the angels of the medium of whatever sphere he’s called his end.