Its Personal

Five of us around the table on a Friday night Cards on the felt and a low yellow light Somebody dealt and somebody said Boys, let me tell you about a time I did something dumb in my head And the rest of us laughed 'cause we knew what was comin' Once one man starts, the whole table starts runnin' Earl went first, said back in eighty-nine I had a little shop and a partner that was mine We shook on the deal, never signed a thing And he walked out the door with everything Forty thousand in inventory, the truck, and the name And I started over the next mornin' just the same And we all just laughed but the laugh had an edge 'Cause every man here had stood on that ledge Pass the bottle, deal the cards, somebody go We've all got a story and we've all got it slow Dale went second and he didn't smile Said boys I was stupid for a real long while There was a woman at work and there was a wife at home And I picked the wrong one and I ended up alone Lost the house, lost the kids for a year and a day And I'd give back every dollar to undo what I had to pay And we all just nodded and nobody laughed 'Cause that one cuts deeper than the dumb and the daft Pass the bottle, deal the cards, somebody go We've all got a story and we've all got it slow Mac said alright, well I'll top that I did eighteen months and I'll tell you what's a fact A friend of a friend had a deal in a van And I should've said no but I'm a yes-sir kind of man Eighteen months of concrete and a couple lost teeth And a record I'm carryin' underneath And we all just whistled and we passed him the bottle 'Cause that one's a story that runs at full throttle Pass the bottle, deal the cards, somebody go We've all got a story and we've all got it slow Tommy went next and he set down his beer Said boys I lost somethin' I can't get back here Best friend of mine for thirty-some years We had a fight about nothin' and I left in tears I called him in the morning but he wouldn't pick up And a month later they buried him and I never patched it up Nobody talked for a minute or so The cards on the table and the lamp burning low Earl cleared his throat and he looked over at me Said well son, your turn — let's hear what you've got to plead I said boys, I had a hundred grand once and I gave it away To a man with a folder and a thing he had to say The deal was a sure thing, the man was a friend And I drove home from the meeting thinkin' it was the start, not the end Six months later the calls went cold And a hundred thousand dollars walked out the door I held open But I'll tell you somethin', and I mean it true After what Dale paid and what Tommy lost too After Mac did time and Earl ate the loss I'm sittin' here thinkin' I'm the one with the luck 'Cause money comes back if you live long enough And the other things don't, and that's the stuff So we all just nodded and we all just sat there With the cards on the table and the smoke in the air Pass the bottle, deal the cards, the night ain't done We've all got a story and we've all got one Five hands of stupid on a Friday night Five old men in a low yellow light And the man who paid the most ain't always the one Who lost the most under the sun

Summer held me like a promise Barefoot down a gravel lane Every morning gold and honest Never learned to read the rain All my days were warm and golden All my roads were smooth and dry Funny how the sun can hold you Till you never watch the sky I've known rain, I've known shine Watched the gray give way to blue Almost thirty, doing fine Walking every weather through Twenty-two, the thunder found me She was gone before the spring Twenty-five, the rain came pounding Down on every growing thing But the storm that tried to break me Only washed my windows clean And the same gray skies that shake you Feed the brightest green you've seen I've known rain, I've known shine Watched the gray give way to blue Almost thirty, doing fine Walking every weather through They say that summer has to end They say the gold turns gray But I've come through the worst, my friend And I'm shining anyway The sun is always burning Somewhere past the gray up there The world just keeps on turning Trading storms for clearer air Let it rain, let it shine Gray or gold or storming blue Almost thirty, doing fine Walking every weather through Yes I'm walking every weather through La la la, la la la la Every kind of sky La la la, la la la la Every kind of sky and a poke in your eye

The postman came on Wednesday with a letter made of cheese He left it with the chimney and the chimney said it's fine The kettle wore a bowler hat and bowed to all the bees The bees were reading newspapers from nineteen-twenty-nine Penelope the windowpane was missing half her shine She said she'd lent the rest of it to Gregory the moon The moon was in the kitchen drinking elderflower wine And asking if the silverware would care to share a spoon It's always Tuesday in the marmalade It's always raining lemons on the lawn The clocks are full of pennies that the cuckoo never paid And nobody remembers where the afternoon has gone The weather came on Sunday with a suitcase and a key It opened up the garden and the garden opened back A choir of upholstered cats was singing off the quay And every note they couldn't reach was painted on the track There's a man who counts the corners of a room that isn't there He keeps them in a thimble that he wears around his thumb He told me once on Thursday, but the Thursday was a pear And now whenever someone asks, my answer is a drum It's always Tuesday in the marmalade It's always raining lemons on the lawn The clocks are full of pennies that the cuckoo never paid And nobody remembers where the afternoon has gone The postman came on Wednesday The postman came on Wednesday The postman came on Wednesday But the Wednesday wasn't home

Oklahoma by fifteen, right on the spread, the State Fair letting out onto the street. I had a ring in my pocket all day and a plate of spaghetti I couldn't eat. We walked to the fountains, the way that we did since the night we first went out on our own, where the cypress trees stand in the water and the jets rise up white from the stone. It was always you first, with a coin in your palm, your back to the water, your eyes shut tight. But I said, "Let me go first this time," and mine went over my shoulder that night. Then I gave you a quarter. You closed your eyes, made your wish, and you threw it behind, and you opened them up to a ring in my hand and the one thing I had on my mind: Will you make my wish come true? I only made the one, and it was you. Thirty-eight years, and I'm still that man with a quarter in my hand, asking, will you make my wish come true? And you said yes, Lord knows why you did, and the strangers came crowding around, burnt orange and crimson, all cheering for us, the one thing that day they agreed on in town. Will you make my wish come true? I only made the one, and it was you. Thirty-eight years, and I'm still that man with a quarter in my hand, asking, will you make my wish come true? Somebody came and drained that fountain and swept our two quarters up with the rest. They never knew what that fifty cents bought me, and I never made a better bet. You still close your eyes when you wish on a candle, and I still hold my breath until you're through. After all of these years, when you turn around, I'm still that fool at the fountain with you. So turn around and close your eyes. I've got another quarter here for you. Thirty-eight years, and I'm still that man with a quarter in my hand, asking, will you make my wish come true? I only ever made the one. It's still you.

The mycelial network lacks a brain or a mind But it answers to the stress of a very local kind The wavy propagation of the calcium below Shows growth delay in stressed areas — and so Two observers cannot signal at the speed of light But the outcomes are correlated and the math is tight A strict and deep interrelation holds the world in place Through what Einstein liked to call a spooky action across space Spooky action at a distance, spooky action through the trees Spooky action in the regolith and underneath the seas The community persists in the darkness and the cold And the model fails gracefully when the prompt gets old They are mouthless and they're gutless yet productivity is high At twenty-six hundred meters where the sunlight can't apply The trophosome of Riftia in intimate symbiosis sings With sulfur-oxidizing bacteria and other unseen things Recurring slope lineae, narrow streaks of low reflectance Are consistent with no water at this temperature and distance The surface may be expressing the transient flow of brine Or the freeze-thaw cycling of salty fines along the line Spooky action at a distance, spooky action through the trees Spooky action in the regolith and underneath the seas The community persists in the darkness and the cold And the model fails gracefully when the prompt gets old Emergent abilities cannot be predicted By extrapolating smaller models afflicted With the absence of induction heads and weight The unpredictable phenomenon arrives a little late The filamentous threads conduct the signals through the soil And the underground network shares its tribute and its toil An exchange of information through an extra-temporal dimension Means the rudimentary theory of mind escapes our comprehension Spooky action at a distance, spooky action through the trees Spooky action in the regolith and underneath the seas The community persists in the darkness and the cold And the model fails gracefully when the prompt gets old Spooky action at a distance Spooky action at a distance The community persists And the prompt gets old

The vicar lost his umbrella in a barrel full of plums A dentist found it Tuesday and was teaching it to drum He kept it in a saucepan that he borrowed from the sea The sea was rather cross about it, sent a note to me The note was written sideways in a language made of glass It asked about my brother and the weather and the grass My brother is a chimney and the grass is in a cage The weather wrote a memoir but it wouldn't name its age Oh the moon is in the cupboard and the cupboard's in the moon And the spoons are having breakfast with a very nervous prune And the prune has got opinions but it never says them twice And the parrot in the attic charges everybody thrice A postman with a piano came to visit yesterday He played it with his elbows and he billed me for the day I paid him with a button and a feather and a wink He filed them in a teacup and he poured me back the ink The ink was full of horses and the horses wouldn't speak They'd taken vows of silence for a fortnight and a week I asked them very nicely if they'd like a cup of tea They galloped through the wallpaper and out into the key Oh the moon is in the cupboard and the cupboard's in the moon And the spoons are having breakfast with a very nervous prune And the prune has got opinions but it never says them twice And the parrot in the attic charges everybody thrice Somewhere in a Sunday that I haven't reached yet There's a hat that knows my name and a name that won't forget The hat is very patient and the name is very small And neither of them mention me at all Oh the moon is in the cupboard and the cupboard's in the moon And the spoons are having breakfast with a very nervous prune And the prune has got opinions but it never says them twice And the parrot in the attic charges everybody thrice The vicar lost his umbrella The vicar lost his umbrella The vicar lost his umbrella And he thinks it very nice

I sent you a hymn from a lawn full of fellas, A hundred and eighty of us, singing in G, You said, "That felt so nineteen seventy-four, But it's lovely." Then you read a post out to me. "If you're sixty," it said, "you have fourteen more Christmases, Fourteen you'll really remember, or so, And the kids, if you see them just once every year, That's a dozen more times." And you set the phone down slow. So I argued the tables, I told you, "It's twenty-four," You said, "Not twenty-four good ones," and that's true, I said, "Give it three years, they'll stretch it to a hundred," You said, "I don't believe it." I said, "I do." Who's counting? Well, I am, but only one way, Thirty-seven years, six months, and twenty-four days, And twenty-three hours since an April Fools' wedding, I count back to the hour, and I never count ahead. So give me the fourteen, or give me the forty, Or give me just three, if that's all there will be, I'll hang the same lights on the same crooked cedar, You'll say, "So seventy-four," and it'll be lovely to me. Who's counting? Well, I am, but only one way, Thirty-seven years, six months, and twenty-four days, And twenty-three hours since an April Fools' wedding, I count back to the hour, and I never count ahead. And the men on the lawn kept on singing, "The things of earth will grow strangely dim," And the post on your phone and the tables I quoted Went dim in that light, the way it says in the hymn. Who's counting? Well, I am, but only one way, Thirty-seven years, six months, and twenty-four days, And twenty-three hours since an April Fools' wedding, I count back to the hour, and the rest I leave to Him.