Souvenir

[Milo]

It's the lazy theologian

The clumsiest poet

Stumbling through the poplar grove

And doesn't even notice

Though his toes bled a little

The bathroom's a sacred space

If faith is under the left nipple

That's the king, no Martin Luther

You might have seen him riding on a, green Markham scooter

Clutching a Hewlett Packard computer

Indeed, he's ageless like Treva Throneberry

I don't worship Norse gods or stone fairies

At home on a cracked iPhone

Alone and hairy, casting post-modernist abra cadabra

It starts like this

Dum dum dum dum doo (I don't know)

I thought they might have killed me

So I read the Hagakure

On a very long drive

From Chicago to here

Holding viking spears

And I cried a lot of tears

But you know I kept an ox bow lake

In my thoughtful cave

And we both thought in gray

Or shades

Maybe even monochrome

This monotone is great

To the monotony

Sought it's own philosophy

To justify the dimples in its face (in its face?)

So we made a couple sticker packs

And pretended we didn't hear

When white fans said Nigga fast

Ummm, there's pollo in this menudo

I'm the newest fellow in this group though

And they're all feasting on my naïveté

I guess it's picture day

I guess it's pizza day

If purity of heart is to will only one thing

Then you have some explaining to do

I can rap like the Afghan

I can rap like my last name was Blackman

I can rap like the son of Mike Ladd

Let me take out a full-page Vice ad

That supposes it might ask

If underground hip-hop was just one tight fad

This is an all-seeing-eye eye patch, if I might add

[Hemlock Ernst]

Got many styles

This time just tryin' to follow Milo

These days, most the time

I'm chillin' in the hollow

The sea slacks

Back in high school I wanted to be abstract

Not like Q, but pretty cool

In my heart

Was always more Busy Bee than Moe Dee

Lunch line headsets had me thinking yoghurt backwards

Plug in the bathysphere

Lake Champlain is crystal clear

I owe it to myself to speak free

Kelly brought me green tea ice cream

I could never forget

Eating sushi off ten dollars

Feeling rich

That was '06

Then I wrote a lot of mean shit

But only got love in my heart

To go along with all them sad ships

That never came

But that's just life

And life is strange

How do you change the way you change the way you feel?

Rain to wash the window clear

Wipe away constellation atmosphere

Blue lagoon, my isolation

Now I'm paper plane folding

Myself into a fortune

Hoping some missing ocean will find some luck

Met Brother Question once

Life in a fish bowl leaves me floating in the punch

Just trying to stay sober

Never read the Hagakure

Think you'd loan me a copy?

I'm still stuck on Murakami

Calvino looming

Looking down from vistas coolly

Through open windows moving

Grass on sand patch, move

Swathed by red clouds, see dead sounds

Dead sea snails – circling metamorphisis

Circling dumbly lit intellectual grumbling

Circling humbly

Numbly picked from keypad

Like Cabbage Patch Kids

Picked from key-latch

Dream Lee’s sagged denim logo tags

Wondering sullenly

Will Tiger ever recover comfortably

Hang heroes' heads on pillows eve

Makes more humans relate

Makes more human mistakes

My humanity places head next to dinner plate

Eat myself

Without feeding myself

Sometimes retreating inside cell walls

The band simply plays on

Sitting, wishing you were here

Next time you're gone

Just remember to buy yourself a souvenir