You'll see many references in my book
to the business dictionary.
This next one is a double guitar and song in iambic pentameter.
And it addresses the issue of fight
that I had with my ex partner, who
was a painter, about what was easier to paint or to write.
[LAUGHTER]
And here's my argument.
[LAUGHTER]
Why would you rather be a painter?
We have our disagreements about paint, the use of words,
and which art is the least corrosive
on the heart, which makes the best amusement
ride for pure escape.
No taint of childhood's mess to hold you back with paint I say,
a tube of Naples yellow rests apart from cruelty or cliche,
no beast inhabits daubs of thalo green,
but hint at even such a word as love
and I am bent like Sisyphus beneath the stone.
I'd rather scrub the fungus from the tiles.
[LAUGHTER]
Give me a brush, some pigment, and my eyes,
I will render where I would have left alone
with words, the peace inside spreading for miles.
Of course, this is the lie.
This is provided I can paint, which
is the lie that language tells and further illustrates
the hell that lurks, a tarry pit, beneath bright sentences.
It is that thing that sense for rent of words that I despise.
Dictators dwell in palaces of words,
while peasants swill the backwash of those lies.
Time someone went and told the emperor of words
he's nude or better yet simply burn his speech
and force him to pick up the brush.
This pitch of mine has dictatorial tones,
but made of nobler stuff I hope, if it
teaches that those who can do and those who can't, bitch.
[LAUGHTER]