Look, ma
They're gonna fry Tim McVeigh
She said, "That nice guy who was on the cov
er of all of those magazines?
Why would they want to do
a thing like that?"
I said, "Well, he killed all those
people in Oklahoma City"
She said, "Nonsense,
people don't kill people
Car bombs kill people"
And I said, "Well, yeah, ma
But they gotta do something
with him"
She said, "Why don't they just
get Mike Tyson
To bite off both his ears?"
A little girl down my block was born
with silicone in her breasts
Turned out her grandmother and her mother
had both had the implants done
Well, evolution took care
of it this time around
And I wondered what it is about
So many women with big breasts
make them look so sad
And I thought, well,
maybe it has somethin' to do with the weight
The burden they're asked to
carry in the world
To feed it, to be the object of
its desires
And I wondered what burdens the rest of us
are carrying all the time
And I couldn't help thinking
And I decided to go out for a walk
And do nothing except
look everybody I see in the eyes
And not be the first to avert my eyes
No matter what
I was planning to be gone
for ten minutes
But things started happening
And I didn't return for two years
By which time I was the heavyweight
champion of the world
And the expectant father of sixteen children
By thirteen different wo
I was in a fishing village in coastal Spain
It was our lady of abortion Sunday afternoon
All the pregnant women
in their first trimester
Filed before the priest to
receive the blessing of
"Try again sometime, try again"
The old barber had dyed his hair
green for the occasion
And pierced his nipples
And was riding his skateboard to the statue
of Conan O'Brien
Where he was doing
backflips for the kids
Who threw coins given
to them by their parents
The chimpanzee who had managed
to type out Hamlet three years before
Was sitting in the third floor office
of the driver's license building
Typing out zoning ordinances
Typing out learner's permits
Bored and lonely
And in Berkeley
And in Greenwich Village
And in Paris
And in Scottsbluff, Nebraska
No one sits around funky little
coffee shops anymore
Talking revolution
Now they get a Starbucks to go
They go back to their basketball
games
Where they see who can jump higher
Who can jam
Who can take it to the rack
And they all wear baseball caps
Except they don't say Yankees or
Dodgers or Cardinals anymore
They say Nike, Reebok, Adidas
Because the pro players don't play
for teams anymore
They play for shoe companies
And the kids aren't fooled
Nah, they're just biding their time
Waiting for the millennium to come
When all the computers will crash
Because the best scientists in the world
Forgot to make them read zero
Now I was sitting there with a
headful of dark thoughts
Like I sometimes get
Suddenly everything cleared
And I realized that the only
purpose to revolution
Is to be able to love who you want
How you want
When you want
And where you want
So I took off all my clothes
Stole a boat
Rowed out to the middle of a lake
And I jumped in
And I looked back at you an d said
"Come on! Get wet!"
Dan Bern 
