By the second verse, dear friends, my head will burst and my life will end, so I'd like to start this one off by saying "live! and love!"
I was young and at home in bed, hanging on the words some poem said in '31; I was impressionable. I was upsettable. I tried to make my breathing stop or my heart beat slow, so when my mom and John came in I would be cold.
From a bridge on Washington Avenue, the year of 1972 broke my bones and skull, and it was memorable. It was half a second in; I was half-way down - do you think I wanted to turn back around and teach a class where you kiss the ass that I've exposed to you? And at the funeral, the University cried at three poems they'd present in place of a broken me.
I was breaking in a case of suds at the Brass Rail, a fall-down drunk with his tongue torn out and his balls removed. And I knew that my last lines were gone, while, stupidly, I lingered on. Oh, but wise men know when it's time to go, and so I should too. And so I fly into the brightest winter sun of this frozen town. I'm stripped down to move on, my friends: I'm gone.
I hear my father fall, and I hear my mother call, and I hear the others all whispering, come home. I'm sorry to go. I loved you all so, but this is the worst trip I've ever been on.
So hoist up the John B. sail. See how the main sail sets. I'm full in my heart and my head and I want to go home, with a book in my hand, in the way I had planned. This is the worst trip I've ever been on.
So hoist up the John B. sail. See how the main sail sets. I'm full in my heart and my head and I want to go home, with a book in each hand, in the way I had planned. I feel so broke up, I want to go home.
