Tiny Glowing Screens (Part 2)

There’s 7 billion 46 million people on the planet

And most of us have the audacity to think we matter

Hey, you hear the one about the comedian who croaked?

Someone stabbed him in the heart, just a little poke

But he keeled over ‘cause he went into battle

Wearing chain mail made of jokes

Hey, you hear the one about the screenwriter who passed away?

He was giving elevator pitches

And the elevator got stuck halfway

He ended up eating smushed sandwiches

They pushed through a crack in the door

And repeating the same crappy screenplay idea

About talking dogs 'til his last day

Hey, you hear the one about the fisherman who passed?

He didn’t jump off that ledge

He just stepped out into the air

And pulled the ground up towards him really fast

Like he was pitching a line and went fishing for concrete

The earth is a drum and he’s hitting it on beat

The reason there’s smog in Los Angeles

Is ‘cause if we could see the stars

If we could see the context of the universe in which we exist

And we could see how small each one of us is

Against the vastness of what we don’t know

No one would ever audition for a McDonalds commercial again

And then where would we be?

No frozen dinners and no TV

And is that a world we want to text in?

Either someone just microwaved popcorn

Or I hear the sound of a thousand people

Pulling their heads out of their asses in rapid succession

The people are hunched over in Boston

They’re starting app stores

And screen printing companies in San Francisco

They’re grinning in Los Angeles

Like they’ve got fishhooks in the corners of their mouth

But don’t paint me like the good guy ‘cause every time I write

I get to choose the angle that you view me and select the nicest light

You wouldn’t respect me if you heard the typewriter chatter tap tap

Tapping through my mind at night

The same stupid tape loop of old sitcom dialogue

And tattered memories of a girl I got to grind on in high school

Filed carefully on rice paper

My heart is a colored pencil

But my brain is an eraser

I don’t want a real girl, I want to trace her from a catalogue

Truth be told I’m unlikely to hold you down

Cause my soul is a crowded subway train

And people keep deciding to get on the next one that rolls through town

I’m joining a false movement in San Francisco

I’m frowning and hunched over in Boston

I’m smiling in Los Angeles

Like I’ve got fishhooks in the corners of my mouth

And I’m celebrating on weekends

Because there are 7 billion 47 million people on the planet

And I have the audacity to think I matter

I know it’s a lie but I prefer it to the alternative

Because I’ve got a tourniquet tied at my elbow / I’ve got

A blunt wrap filled with compliments and I’m burnin it

You say to go to sleep but I been bouncing off my bedroom walls

Since I was hecka small

We’re every age at once

And tucked inside ourselves like Russian nesting dolls

My mother is an 8 year old girl

My grandson is a 74 year old retiree whose kidneys just failed

And that’s the glue between me and you

That’s the screws and nails

We live in a house made of each other

And if that sounds strange that’s because it is

Someone please freeze time so I can run around

Turning everyone’s pockets inside out

And remember

You didn’t see shit