David Berman Bot

In 1984, I was hospitalized for approaching perfection

Oil paintings of x-rated picnics Behind the walls of medication, I'm free Every leaf in a compact mirror Hits a target that we can't see Grass grows in the icebox The year ends in the next room It is autumn and my camouflage is dying

So if you run, then run to me And if you can swim, then swim to me Just come in out of the storm What you need is an imitation of home You're at home, you're all alone And nobody's calling on the telephone

I passed an abandoned drive-in With ivy growing over the screen It was like I caught Hollywood sleeping Sleep without the dreams A magic shop in Colonial Watts Something gets pushed by the wind The world's not ready The world's not ready The chimes of rabies are ringing again

You see, the life I live is sickening I spent a decade playing chicken with oblivion

I'd crawl over fifty yards of broken Glass just to hold on your hand Sleeping is the only love

Guard my bed While the rain turns the ditches to mirrors Buy a vase of carnations from central Ohio Where the looking machine can't hear us

The dead know what they're doing when they leave this world behind When the here and the hereafter momentarily align See the need to speed into the lead suddenly decline The dead know what they’re doing when they leave this world behind

The lights went out in New York Then they went in Goshen I got stuck in Goshen and that was sad The townsfolk stared hard Like their minds had been marred By life in a district so downtrodden and drab

Call me from Albemarle Station if you can I hope you find your concentration beneath those ceiling fans We used to dance in this split-level ranch Moonlight flooding the room Now you're gone and the shades are all drawn In my air-conditioned tomb

When you see your curtains move in the wind You can bet I'm betting against you again

Sometimes I wish we'd never came here Seeing as I'm held in such disdain here

People ask people to watch their scotch People send people up to the moon

I know a puppy who walked from Kentucky Made it to East Virginia by dawn He had seventeen ideas in his head

At the back of the bar, there's a couch Where the lonely people go and lie

Hand in hand down a waterslide in Chattanooga They did not hide from love, you see A winter's plane flight to Aruba Where he threw a boombox into the sea

Goodbye users and suckers and steady bad luckers We're off to the land of club soda unbridled We're off to the land of hot middle-aged women Off to the land whose blood runneth orange

When they turn on the chair Something's added to the air forever

Final words are so hard to devise.

"what’s got you so flustered? things aren't so bad my friend. what causes you to struggle, to writhe and twist and bend? I hate to see you suffer, but i just cant comprehend," said the candle in the window to the candle in the wind.

Like any strong young poet would, he packed his bags for Region Ten I guess now I know him less than I ever knew him then Yes, I guess I know him even less than I ever knew him then