What You Should Think About Doing Instead by Dobby Gibson
Make sandwiches of pesto
and square luncheon meats.
Fear poison-arrow frogs. Fidget. Fall.
Live Tuesday in an iron lung.
Decipher the inscription of sad dogs
along the world's tallest totem pole.
There was a man in Iowa
who hiccupped for sixty-nine years.
There was an Indian with thirty-inch fingernails,
a left hand of brittle snakes.
Give it music. Angular rhythms. Rapid yodeling.
Soon you add voices,
then dense, thick harmony.
Dress it all in a gown of generous streams
beneath the hiss of dusk.
Mail your stamp collection.
Don't worry, the wine is tight,
but it will loosen up.
For now chew thoughtfully on your glasses.
For now watch the u and e
line up like quiet Londoners in queue.
As soon as afternoon fractures,
we'll both hear the drums more clearly, get zozzled.
Forget about places you'd rather not be:
Walla Walla, Cucamonga, Timbuktu.
This is Vegas, where the machinery weeps quarters.
This is the combination to the safe
behind the velvet painting.
This is an island where waterfalls
drool all over themselves,
where bees step into blossoms
and mine tiny morsels of gold.
Everywhere are cats or else small animals
wearing fantastic pants.
This is Scotland where Mel Ednie
made the books with a twelve-pound onion.
Notice the bears as they awaken.
Don't be afraid, they're plastic and full of honey.
It's still the popular subject of all time: love.
But not the paired imitation kind.
Or the kind where she
eventually showers with your friend.
Forget the stray hair recovered,
the unseen moment it leapt
from scalp to sweater, snapping tether.
Think about the man with the beard of bees,
the one so fat he was buried in a piano crate.
No known human language
is without the vowel a,
and no funeral is without its music,
its laden rhythm of shoveled earth.
Consider the Siamese twins
and their reported sex lives,
the woman so tiny she worked as a king's doll.
Someplace far from here a guru
strolls over smoldering coals.
Much closer is the child in boots
afraid to strike a match.
In Baltimore, science grows human ears
on the backs of mice.
Everywhere we play the rolls
of characters dressed exactly
as ourselves, though unconvincingly.
Full chorus now: Have mercy on us.
Now we can straddle the baroque.
Now we can set the record straight.
Eventually yesterday fades, or she fades,
and finally even love,
and what's left is not the comet,
all fire and pulse, but its smear
of slowly melting diamonds.
Play this again now that you know all the words.
and square luncheon meats.
Fear poison-arrow frogs. Fidget. Fall.
Live Tuesday in an iron lung.
Decipher the inscription of sad dogs
along the world's tallest totem pole.
There was a man in Iowa
who hiccupped for sixty-nine years.
There was an Indian with thirty-inch fingernails,
a left hand of brittle snakes.
Give it music. Angular rhythms. Rapid yodeling.
Soon you add voices,
then dense, thick harmony.
Dress it all in a gown of generous streams
beneath the hiss of dusk.
Mail your stamp collection.
Don't worry, the wine is tight,
but it will loosen up.
For now chew thoughtfully on your glasses.
For now watch the u and e
line up like quiet Londoners in queue.
As soon as afternoon fractures,
we'll both hear the drums more clearly, get zozzled.
Forget about places you'd rather not be:
Walla Walla, Cucamonga, Timbuktu.
This is Vegas, where the machinery weeps quarters.
This is the combination to the safe
behind the velvet painting.
This is an island where waterfalls
drool all over themselves,
where bees step into blossoms
and mine tiny morsels of gold.
Everywhere are cats or else small animals
wearing fantastic pants.
This is Scotland where Mel Ednie
made the books with a twelve-pound onion.
Notice the bears as they awaken.
Don't be afraid, they're plastic and full of honey.
It's still the popular subject of all time: love.
But not the paired imitation kind.
Or the kind where she
eventually showers with your friend.
Forget the stray hair recovered,
the unseen moment it leapt
from scalp to sweater, snapping tether.
Think about the man with the beard of bees,
the one so fat he was buried in a piano crate.
No known human language
is without the vowel a,
and no funeral is without its music,
its laden rhythm of shoveled earth.
Consider the Siamese twins
and their reported sex lives,
the woman so tiny she worked as a king's doll.
Someplace far from here a guru
strolls over smoldering coals.
Much closer is the child in boots
afraid to strike a match.
In Baltimore, science grows human ears
on the backs of mice.
Everywhere we play the rolls
of characters dressed exactly
as ourselves, though unconvincingly.
Full chorus now: Have mercy on us.
Now we can straddle the baroque.
Now we can set the record straight.
Eventually yesterday fades, or she fades,
and finally even love,
and what's left is not the comet,
all fire and pulse, but its smear
of slowly melting diamonds.
Play this again now that you know all the words.