Sergeant Benderman

i heard him on the radio i heard him speaking on the radio he had a bit of a southern accent his name was sergeant benderman his name was sergeant benderman yeah they got him in the brig right now down in fort stewart georgia down in my home state i know i've been down on the folks in my home state lately not that they don't deserve it not that they don't earn it every fucking day but you know but you know

sergeant benderman i don't know what he was doing in the army to start with i don't know why he joined something about him being the fourth or fifth generation of soldier in his family i guess i guess that is a good enough reason i told my kid i told my kids that i'd shoot them in the big toe if they thought about joining the army joining the navy joining anything short of the local basketball team if it came to wearing a uniform but you know

sergeant benderman he said something on the radio he said he didn't want to fight he said he had been over in iraq for six months and he just couldn't understand any more that i guess takes a bit of balls that takes just a bit of gumption to turn your back on that many generations of family he said he saw a little girl standing on the side of the road her arm was gone in its place was a sizzling nub of flesh and she cried for help and he cried and i cried when

i heard him on the radio

sergeant benderman just got fed up with it all he said it was his wish for everyone of his friends everyone of those guys wearing uniforms over there everyone of those guys carrying guns and shooting at each other to just get fed up with it all that's all it takes that's all it takes just listen to your heart just listen to your heart don't don't

don't listen to george

hey george fuck you and your old man hey george fuck you and your daddy i'd rather

listen to sergeant benderman he's filing for conscientious objector status whatever the fuck that is shit if you're not a conscientious objector then yeah then you should be put in the brig he filed for conscientious objector status and his chaplain his fucking chaplain you know that's another fucking thing reminds me of the old george carlin routine where he talked about mutually exclusive terms one of them was military intelligence well what about army chaplain i mean what the fuck is that all about a man of god a man of the cloth wearing a uniform and counseling his brethren on how the jay man didn't really mean that turn the other cheek thing hey jesus died for our sins but you best be killing that aa rab motherfucker over there jesus didn't die for him let's make that motherfucker die for us too so the good sarge he sought out his chaplain and get this he sought out his chaplain and his chaplain told him this spiritual advisor he said quote i am ashamed of you sergeant benderman unquote he was fucking ashamed of benderman this is a

man of the cloth

so to speak don't you know can't you imagine the sinners lining up to get this motherfucker's blessing i know i want him feeding me my daily dose of the body of christ my little shot of jesus blood as i kneel before the bloody fucker he's probably been wandering the prison camps pointing at the young tender detainees like caligula pointing them out sending them over to the little tent chapel buggering them in the name of jesus himself well i guess he screams for jesus when gets that perfectly tight fit

no lube for you young man

i heard sergeant benderman on the radio i don't know him from god himself but i like him i'm going to send him a letter i'm going to send him a letter and tell him i like him tell him that on this final day of february in the year of our lord two thousand and five he is my hero we all need heroes and today i will go on record as saying the good sergeant is my hero

i heard sergeant benderman on the radio today he said he said i have learned from first hand experience that war is the destroyer of everything that is good in the world he said he said it and i sat at the dinner table with stella and the kids with oldest son who is eighteen and could be drafted when george gets the whim with one and only daughter little lu with youngest son who really only thinks about basketball and getting into duke how the fuck can he comprehend sergeant benderman and his troubles i hope that one day he will look back he will remember the dinner when the old man quoted sergeant benderman he said

i have learned from first hand experience that war is the destroyer of everything that is good in the world yeah i think that jesus said that too if he didn't he would have

i want to stand in the streets and lift my arms to the sky and ask that jesus talk to all of those soldiers just like he spoke to sergeant benderman i want to stand in the streets lift my arms to the sky and ask jesus to lead all those soldiers off the field of battle have them walk across the desert have them go all the way to lebanon march all across the desert to lebanon smoke some of that fine lebanese hashish take a long swim across the atlantic and come on home i do i do

i want to stand in the streets and lift my arms to the sky i want to ask the goddess to squat over that fucked up land to squat and piss on all these armies piss on them all from above sprinkle her spray all about the battlefield send our boys and girls on home send their boys and girls on back home what a miracle it would be what a wondrous thing if only if only each and every one just said

i can't do this any more

i heard sergeant benderman on the radio today he is my hero you know all it takes is one at a time all it takes is one person at a time to just say to just drop their guns and say

i can't do this any more

sergeant benderman is my new hero and all that

Charlotte up in Carolina

load 'em up move 'em out it's a long strange drive from atlanta gee aa to charlotte up in carolina just one road really you get on interstate eighty-five you drive a couple hundred miles you get off interstate eighty-five you're there you're there you're fucking where i don't know charlotte is a fucking redneck city full of rednecks done good made some money turned republican and still try to fuck the black folks but hell there's mexicans to fuck over now we got enough fuck-over to spread out amongst everyone shit why not

load 'em up move 'em out it's a long strange drive from atlanta gee aa to charlotte up in carolina parts of it are pretty up around kings mountain driving in on the georgia side over lake hartwell little bit of kudzo here and there my buddy glen he has a house on a lake right outside of charlotte yeah sure is pretty he sold a house in marin county poured the money back into a house in charlotte let's just say he did well in the financial transaction a shack in marin county will get you a castle right outside charlotte north carolina yeah the boy did well got him a big old house a dock a boathouse and a speedboat i think the boy might be turning on me i know he still votes democratic but it's only a matter of time before i know it he's going to buy himself one of them all terrain vehicles and sitting on his dock drinking jack daniels throwing bread crumbs into the water and then and then and then shooting the fish that bob up to eat them

load 'em up and move 'em out it's a long strange drive from atlanta gee aa to charlotte up in carolina it's a three three and half hour drive there's a little stretch in south carolina little stretch for about an hour seemed like twelve hours little stretch for about an hour where the only radio i could get was god radio christian radio christian rock family radio jesus talk radio now i have to admit that the first few minutes of listening to it to these people calling in and talking about family values was kind of amusing but after a while after a while it gets kind of wierd it all starts to make sense we get kind of isolated out here in san francisco you know we just sort of assume that everyone out there thinks kind of like us that's a mistake let me tell you these people i hope it ain't you people yeah these people are not like us at all oh my no these people they don't like other people seemed kind of odd considering they were calling into jesus talk radio just seems to be so many contradictions they don't like gay people they don't like people who don't speak english they don't like people who wear funny clothes even if it is their own kids they don't like women who shave their pussies well they didn't say it quite like that i just sort of inferred it oh kay oh kay i admit it i kind of blanked out a bit you know it was a long drive no turns i started thinking about a shaved pussy and somebody on the radio interrupted my thoughts by saying they didn't like something somebody and it just mixed in there with shaved pussy and just fucked up my little roadtrip cruise control fantasy don't you know

load 'em up and move 'em out it's a long strange drive from atlanta gee aa to charlotte up in carolina it's more than a two-joint ride but i only smoked most of one mainly because i smoked a couple of cigarettes too i had been drinking coffee all day so had to pull over at every fucking rest area along the way take a leak smoke a cigarette rest areas are always such an amalgamation of amalgams you got your basic old folks with the oficial aa aa are pee bumper sticker on the back of their road home on the back of their land yacht i hope one day to be driving a land yacht across this great country of ours yessiree i do i do you got your strange ones writing or scratching their cute little messages on the bathroom walls about sucking your dick assuming you have a dick out in the large beige el tee dee i saw a beige el tee dee but it had a dark brown vinyl top and the gentleman behind the wheel looked all normal and everything i don't know if he looks the type to have a twelve inch dick hey i guess you never know you got your extended families all squeezed into a nineteen seventy-four dodge colt with rusted wheel wells and buger king bags falling to the pavement as uncle joe aunt mary cousin bob mom dad and pregnant sister all struggle out hey i had to take a leak drain the lizard the entertainment was nothing but bonus points

load 'em up and move 'em out it's a long strange drive from atlanta gee aa to charlotte up in carolina a number of billboard signs bragging about adult super stores all along the highway toys novelties booths movies truckers welcome yeah oh kay i thought about it but i just didn't have time i had to get to charlotte i had a dinner to get to maybe on the way back to atlanta gee aa tomorrow maybe on the way back meetings here meetings there i forgot just how many billboards there are on the highways back east tons of billboards stuckeys pecan logs and mister waffle and the ever smiling ronald mcdonald and i kept seeing this billboard for dubya dubya dubya god dot com or maybe it was dubya dubya dubya in god dot com i forget

but it was something about god

hey ain't nothing wrong with god got nothing against god got ain't nothin' wrong with god i'm down with god i mean god is love and i'm all about love myself i'm all about love i ain't nothing but love baby so me and god we're like the proverbial crossed fingers you know you know you stand up you say we're like this you hold up your index finger your middle finger crossed over each other i wonder about the significance of having the old fuck you finger and your pointing finger the j'accuse finger coming together to mean closeness it's a judas kind of thing ain't it ain't it ain't it hey ain't nothing wrong with god

but it was something about god maybe i'm just a little jealous i mean maybe it's something about these rednecks claiming some kind of exclusive over god that kind of irks me i mean come on i'm digging on the old guy too i mean the jay man he was just all right with me the jay man he just was all right with me what's with this redneck exclusivity thing going on

load 'em up and move 'em out it's a long strange drive from atlanta gee aa to charlotte up in carolina and all that

Angry Southern Gentleman

once upon a time ago once upon a time long long time ago don't you know before i went grey before i became an old stoner i was just a young stoner i lived in a buttfuck little town wasn't so little actually i mean i mean ain't like it was macon county line kind of shit we had paved roads we had shopping centers we had traffic lights we had more than one cop we had an entire police department two high schools yeah valdosta georgia population thirty-eight thousand i think at the time a sort of spielberg suburban little town with a white trash topspin a suburban little town with no urban where we could submit with our slovenly crackerhood it was on the way to florida it was on the way up to atlanta

i'm just going to say this i'm just going to say this i'm just going to say this i'm not going to beat around the bush i'm not going to get all symbolic i'm not going to force any reading between the lines no need having to take this paragraph back to the english text books and try and figure out just what i meant try and figure out just what i'm trying to say try and figure out any hidden meaning there ain't no hidden meaning there ain't there ain't it's all right here on the table ready here it is i fucking despised valdosta georgia yeah yeah i may wax eloquently i may speak in nostalgic romantic terms about valdosta georgia yes i may but it's all bullshit it's all a pack of lies this place this town is a pox on the earth it's a parochial pit where the redneck is romanticized where where where

yeah yeah yeah

the south feeds on itself the south feeds on itself the south feeds on itself and i'm glad i'm not there anymore fucking rednecks

it was easy to leave heck we were right on interstate seventy-five north went to detroit or something like that south went to tampa then a hard left to orlando

i wasn't born there but i guess i claim to be from there last station before sublimation last stop before freedom i wasn't from there but i lived there i was born at the other end of the state up in milledgeville that's where the state mental hospital sits that's where flannery o'conner committed herself she couldn't handle the shit either she just went another direction i consider it myself sometimes as well maybe when i don't  have so many responsibilities

i wasn't born in valdosta i just lived there i moved to southside virginia when i was seven i moved to valdosta georgia when i was fourteen in between spent summers in southwest georgia cuthbert georgia at my grandma's house at my cousin's house working for my uncle's little general store called it corner grocery he sold it and bought bottom bait shop my uncle was a regular retail entrepreneur had a little oyster bar attached to bottom bait shucked oysters and popped budweisers from october to march ain't nothing like an appalachicola oyster hot sauce and a gooseneck bud yeah baby cuthbert georgia valdosta georgia waycross georgia albany georgia where they ain't afraid to say nigger and say it with pride

shit i ain't got nothing against niggers i think ever'one ought to own one or two so said my cousins so said my uncles so said all the ignorant fucks hell i might have said it before i turned twelve or thirteen it ain't easy being surrounded by such fucking ignorance my momma she never said it my momma she would slap me if i said nigger in the house my momma she said we're all people my momma she wasn't like all the rest my daddy he never said it around my momma either then eventually he just never said it my momma was a commanding presence

my momma she said we're all people

when i was in the fifth grade when i was in the fifth grade there was another war going on some other stupid war it was nineteen and sixty-nine i remember because the atlanta braves played the new york mets in the playoffs first year they had the playoffs before the world series we had just integrated schools the powers to be had just brought all the white students into the same school with all the black students these same powers to be also felt it was high time that a private school was built a new tradition was started building upon the old tradition can't have them pretty white girls going to school with those black bucks no sirree when i was in the fifth grade there was another war going on

and we needed teachers and we got all these teachers come down from up north they needed a draft deferment they came south to teach us heathens my fifth grade teach was mister warner he was young he was a new york met fan he used to talk to us about martin luther king and the viet nam war and richard fucking nixon he did when i went into the sixth grade mister warner was asked to leave the school i guess they didn't like his ideas

mister warner he had the audio video guys bring a television down to the classroom in nineteen and sixty-nine mister warner he had 'em bring the black and white school tee vee down to the classroom and we watched the world series they played the games in the afternoons back then i liked mister warner they you know the powers to be they didn't like mister warner

i liked his ideas

in the eighth grade i had miss lewis she gave me books she gave me johnny got his gun she gave me electric kool-aid acid test she gave me books i drank them up i swallowed them whole she taught me to write a paragraph when i went to the ninth grade they asked miss lewis to leave i guess they didn't like her ideas

miss lewis she had long reddish blond hair i masturbated to really cool teacher fantasies with miss lewis i think that's oh kay i mean she was my teacher i didn't have nurse fantasies about her cynthia smith was in my class with miss lewis i masturbated thinking about cynthia's panties but i didn't go down the teacher fantasy lane with her i save that for miss lewis

i liked her ideas

i didn't know any black people i mean yeah of course i knew lots of black people but not really it's not like my family and black families got together on the weekend and had a barbecue i mean i mean it's not like i would call up donnell smith and say hey donnell want to come over and play chess yeah once we were in high school we played sports together yeah of course they were in school we all went to the same school but hey but hey they tracked us i was in the college track hell all but the fucking stupidest white people were in the college track not too many black folks in the college track hell i just thought that's the way it was

if nobody tells a kid how it is if nobody tells a kid how it's supposed to be even if the fucking preachers stand up on the pulpit and tell you this is how it is this is how it's supposed to be i mean the fucking preachers for crying out loud jesus fucking christ how's a kid going to know i was raised an ignorant white boy i guess i'm still an ignorant white boy but i'm trying at least now i'm trying

summer after sophomore year of college i came home summer after sophomore year i came home to work to earn a little money did a little construction work my friend he went to work over at this factory jimmy's dad owned the factory he gave a few jobs out to the returning college white boys gave them sweet jobs making higher wages than the other employees the other other employees were mostly black folks paid them minimum wage didn't know nothing about health insurance didn't know nothing about retirement didn't know nothing

there was this black chick working there she was cute she was hot she had a thing for my buddy and my buddy he liked this girl he liked this girl a lot he wanted he wanted he wanted

her

a member of the community an upstanding citizen one of them powers to be he pulled my buddy aside a member of the community pulled my buddy aside he whispered into his ear he said he whispered talking to my buddy whose plan it was to go to med school and return home to valdosta georgia and practice his medicine practice on the local populace this noted member of the community he whispered now good buddy i know how you want to get yourself a little piece of that brown sugar but let me tell you let me remind you let me advise you that you best do it behind the bushes in the dark

he said i understand that craving i understand how that forbidden fruit just looks so good and let me tell you from experience that it is a delicious sweet and juicy bite

but but but let me advise you that my little old grandma ain't going to visit some doctor that's had his hands all over some lovely ebony warrior princess they just don't play that way down here you listening to me boy you hearing me right

yeah i hear you right my buddy said

yeah i hear you right

shit i heard him too i guess i just didn't let it sink in too much i couldn't believe the reality of the advice my buddy he took it to heart he didn't go get himself any of that brown sugar at least he never told me about it if he did i guess we all have our dark secrets someone someone someone asked me someone asked me why i ever left the south or maybe it was how did i leave the south there ain't no specific why there's a whole bunch of why's but this one this little why this one little why might have been that why that broke the proverbial camel's back that stepped on the crack that broke my momma's back but if the question was how if the question was just how did i get out of the south well i guess i drove i guess i just got in my car and left

yeah i drove up highway seventy-five hung a left drove through saint louis and kept going kept going kept driving didn't stop and didn't look back and didn't stop i don't remember how far it was but it took about an ounce of weed and all that

Eight by Sixteen

oh lord i know that i have sinned i know i know that i have danced too often with satan himself dancing in the dark alleys and sidestreets of my muddled mind i know i know i have gazed through the peep holes of hell itself but this ain't right this ain't fair this travail ain't the way it's supposed to be

i have never fucked with anything other than love in my heart yeah yeah there is often a bit of craziness mixed in rather blended in i attribute it to enthusiasm i'm just crazy 'bout that stuff it's a healthy kind of crazy i think i hope i mean i'm just a puppy dog i'm just a big old puppy dog who doesn't know how clumsy and silly he is i learn the same lesson over and over and over again and i love it just as much the next time teach me baby teach me sugar

i'm just a big old hunk of dough just roll me in sugar put me in the oven

but but but this ain't right this ain't right this is almost biblical i ain't job i ain't i stood on my back deck this morning the crack of dawn splitting the sky the fiery sun coming up over the buildings i can't even stop to contemplate one of my favorite tom waits thoughts he is my favorite philosopher he speaks to me in times of trouble in times of bliss i turn to him when i am confused content whenever but there is the morning meditation that he offers that i embody that i cherish that i hold close there is a morning meditation and it is it goes something like this i'm so horny that the crack of dawn better not bend in over in front of me most mornings i stand on the back deck i stand on the beach with cuda i stand on the beach at the south end rowing club before i slide into the chilly cunt of the goddess most mornings i watch the sunrise and meditate on tom's words but

no not this morning

i looked up into the sky that sky that i only see here in northern california in the winter the morning rain clouds parting drifting away slinking off after dancing for us all night long the blue appearing spreading the sun springing up and bursting forth with such anger such froth i looked up and i raised my fist and i screamed i cursed

eight sixteen year old girls were sleeping in my living room wearing only what my imagination would allow beneath those blankets geezus geezus let me tell you it's no wonder that the old man went with a massive heart failure he must have been anticipating this event this little party that one and only daughter had last night all her cute and perky friends sleeping over with a stack of movies

this is the cruel and punishing god that the baptist preachers back home used to threaten me with there he is motherfucker motherfucker motherfucker now you come out behind your rock now you expose your morbid self i feel like i'm living inside a greek myth the gods are all coming down off olympus and mocking me reminding me of my frailties reminding me of my having been cast away from the tent of cool shunned i'm a citizen of the uncool now what the fuck what the fuck

further proof that god is a pervert why else would he torture me in such a manner who else but a bonafide certified perv would sit up on his stool sit up on his directors chair rubbing his hands smacking his lips thinking let's see let's see i know i know let's take eight cute and perky sixteen year old girls let's have them wear next to nothing and prance around his own home from early in the evening until the next morning let's have the phatfuck walk down the stairs in the morning like he does every morning stumble down the stairs in the morning to get his newspapers his san francisco chronicle got to have it for the comics and local political gossip and his new york times because it makes him look so cool down at the coffee shop yeah he only thinks he's cool because when he walks down those stairs and before he gets to his newspaper he will glance left into the living room and see eight scantily clad sixteen year old girls sprawled all over the floor and each other their blankets askew long blonde and brown and black hair spread across pillows like some gee cue spread like one of the dutch masters had painted some bacchanal orgy and hung it across the archway leading into his real living room yeah that will teach him a lesson especially if one of those girls is from his own loins if one of those girls is his one and only daughter that will teach the bastard a lesson

yes yes yes tell me tell me you are a liar if you tell me that this is not proof that god is a fucking pervert

i stand on the deck i raise my fist i curse the old pervert

i do my sunday i go down to the south end i take a run i go for a long swim i hang out on the roof with my man peter we indulge in the herb of the goddess yes the goddess she is much kinder than her spouse we indulge we talk shit we expound serious thoughts we know when our time is up we stumble down the steps we head home i dread coming in through the door there is youngest son sitting in there right in the middle with them they're watching a movie they're all over him they think he's so cute he's a dog rolling in shit they can't get enough of him i bet he's going to have a hardon for the next twelve days and then i know and then i know and then i know that it's come to this it's come to this

i'm living through my son now i need therapy this shit is driving me crazy ah to be young again i just want to be that ball of dough rolling in the sugar once again alack alas another latitude baby

i stand on the deck i raise my fist i curse the old pervert

eight sixteen year old girls and all that

Sixteen

(my one and only daughter turns sixteen in the morning and she asked me to write her a poem so i did)

lawdy lawdy little lu little lu lawdy lawdy little lu

she walks into a room she sweeps into a room she invades the room she takes away my breath you you you little lu little lu

sweet lucia sweet sixteen look out world

lawdy lawdy little lu little lu lawdy lawdy little lu

oh kay oh kay sweet sixteen sixteen candles and a big old cake and a big old cake and a big old cake sweet sixteen can't hold a candle to this flame to this flare to this firestorm look out world

lawdy lawdy little lu little lu lawdy lawdy little lu

never seen a girl so certain never seen a girl so direct never known a girl so strong never known a girl like lu never known anyone like my little lu look out world

sixteen years on this earth sixteen years in our arms sixteen years in our hearts sixteen years and she's kicking to get loose

little lu little lu lawdy lawdy little lu

she gets behind the wheel of that automobile she going to make us deal she got the lead foot she got attitude to boot she got liquid dynamite flowing through them veins she going to take aim oh lawdy look out world

lawdy lawdy little lu little lu lawdy lawdy little lu

she look up at me she say oh daddy oh daddy oh why don't you do this for me why don't you do that for me i can't help myself i can't help myself how do i unwrap myself from that little finger look out world

lawdy lawdy little lu little lu lawdy lawdy little lu

she got love for her friends she got love for her family she got love enough to give and give and give she got love she got my love she got so much of my love we could fill the whole pacific ocean yes we could little lu little lu lawdy lawdy little lu

she got a heart the size of montana she got a heart the size of wyoming she got a heart the size of texas and new mexico combined this little lu she got heart

and she got my heart yeah she do lawdy lawdy little lu little lu lawdy lawdy little lu

yeah and all that

Clinical

oh kay oh kay first there is the clinical the official the technical just the facts ma'am just the facts he went to sleep on tuesday night tuesday night yeah tuesday night i went to sleep on tuesday night too it's just that it's just that i went to sleep tuesday night in a hotel in boulder colorado fucking colorado and he went to sleep in san francisco in his own bed in san francisco yeah there was that

i flew home wednesday afternoon beautiful day beautiful afternoon northern california spring it happens end of january first of february he'd been waiting all winter for this week he fucking hated the san francisco winters he's a florida boy a south georgia coastal boy grew up hanging out on saint simons sometimes wandering west into the okefenoke swamp his great grandma my great great grandma she was cherokee she had a sawmill back up in the swamp it burned down long long time ago he couldn't get used to the san francisco winters

he wore a coat and gloves in the house sometimes in the evening my friends they called him the silver fox

i flew home on a jet plane

i was coming over the hill coming home from the airport stella was at the beach with dog one and dog two and youngest son and youngest son's friend they are two horny thirteen year olds that would rather walk down the beach by themselves so that we can't see them looking at the cute young hard bodies that's all right it's kind of embarrassing to have youngest son see his old man looking at the cute young hard bodies as well

stella and the dogs and the kids strolled the beach as i drove over the hill i stopped took off my shoes and caught up with them the late afternoon winter sun warming up up the sand the chilly waters tingled the toes don't you know we walked we talked stella and me i think we held hands i told her about my trip she told me about her couple of days she said you taste like pot i said baby you know i can't get on that plane without first settling my nerves you know nine eleven and all that she laughed at me scolded me i do my thing she does her thing

she went home took the kids took the dogs i stayed behind to go for a run on the beach the sun hung over the water scattering misty foam sparkled like a million tiny rainbows surfers in black rubber suits threaded in and out of the curling hydrochurn sometimes crouching down and sliding through her wrath sometimes succumbing to her hungry cunt dogs running everywhere others running in the same direction some running in the opposite direction couple of poppa bear types in leather jackets and chaps walking hand in hand some naked little kids digging holes in the wet sand laughing

stella went home i stayed behind i finished my run i hung out on the beach and stretched facing the setting sun it turned orange red falling down below the horizon a little bit at a time a little bit at a time i guess we all go just a little bit at a time i get into the car and stella calls me she screams into the phone oh my god i'm so sorry your father is dead i'm so sorry i say the only thing i could think of i said what she said oh my god come on home now i drove home it was dark there was a firetruck there was a paramedic truck parked out front of the house there were men in uniforms there were a couple of neighbors there was stella being held by one of the neighbors stella cried i kind of stumbled down into dad's apartment there were men in uniform with notebooks and badges and serious looks on their faces and one introduced himself to me and i shook his hand he asked if i was the son the son the son i said yeah he said i'm sorry that this happened i said yeah he walked away there was my dad he was in his bed he was beneath the covers he lay on his back his eyes closed his mouth open the covers weren't disturbed at all could have been asleep far as i knew

could have been asleep far as i knew

but he was dead

dead like a fucking doorknob

the medical examiner he walked in he introduced himself to me he explained what had to happen he was very business like but he was very gentle he had a kind soul i think he chose the right career he explained what had to happen he did it's fucking amazing how institutionalized death has become when did this happen they had to take him to the morgue the city morgue they had to determine the cause of death then you got to do this and do that and pay this and pay that geeze there are so many systems in this life so many sacred institutions the birth system the life system the death system and each and every one of them are so secretive and cultish me i'm in the television system which is a subsystem of the life system

dead like a fucking doorknob dead we both went to sleep on tuesday night we both went to sleep on tuesday night i woke up alive he woke up dead he lived though he lived right up until he was dead he went to sleep that night he went to sleep that night very much alive he woke up dead

i cried and all that

so my dad he just up and died yesterday it sucks i got a lot to say i ain't saying it right now maybe tomorrow

shit and all that