Because that sexy television program I like isn't on tonight, I will type this out for my brother at work:
Love's Body
Bobby Byrd
"At work I got to sneak into the john,
sit there on the cold stool,
so I can read a few poems to remind me who I am.
Absolutely got to. Otherwiese,
they look over my shoulder, say,
"Hey Bob, whatcha reading, POEMS?
Har, har. Bob's reading poems!"
Poems?
Nobody pays attention to poems!
The world is such a big place,
it will never end. It cannot end.
The world is forever.
And even ever after
forever
when we will all live together in Paradise.
Halleleuja!
I will be with the rest of the poets sitting off by ourselves.
We know it is Paradise because we are all friends.
The weather is fine and nobody is bitching.
We are lounging around in the soft green grass,
and the soft green grass is next to a blue, blue sea,
blue like the Sea of Cortez is blue.
We realize that we are inside a painting by Henri Matisse.
Nobody is looking inside the painting.
Nobody is listening to us.
That is okay because this is Paradise.
Every once in a while somebody gets up.
She disappears into the distant scrub carrying a shovel,
a very fine shovel made of tempered steel.
One of us is supposed to bring the beer.
It will be here soon, nobody is in a hurry.
I made the tacos, vegetarian style.
I even brought a jar of homemade pico de gallo.
Some of us are laughing.
It's an old joke, so old it never seems to end."
So that made me think of my brother.
Right now, in Japan, we are drawing close to the 60th anniversary of the bombings. It is different here because we (the Japanese we) not they (the Japanese they) were bombed. Niigata was first in line it has been said, but it was cloudy that day so Hiroshima was chosen. The weather is so important. Still, we or they (the American we or they) haven't apologized for the bomb because it was seen as needed to end the war. Needed to end the war. To overcome evil with good means to kill the right people for the right reasons or the wrong people for the right reasons or the right people for the wrong reasons. Any one of those will do.
Just now on the TV, there was a report of an important man who killed himself in the woods, fell out of a tree into a swamp. The mud still holds the shape of his falling body. It is now prepetually falling.
And so, in all midst of all this? A girl, coming down the steps with a beetle in her hand. Here, she says giving it to me, This is the beetle from the poem I sent you.
Yes, it is. It is the beetle from the poem you sent me.