This is called "Paint 'Til You Faint."
[LAUGHING]
House, house, go away.
[LAUGHING]
You're looking prettier all the time and, look me,
I'm a rag, a brush, a mop, a hammer.
I'm your lowly employee, not what I intended.
I wanted shelter, a self-propelled houseboat.
House painting for a fortnight now,
I have no idea how long I've been stroking wide,
up, down, back, forth when I slapped a good juicy
one across my face.
I can't get mad at a fool like that.
I kept painting as if nothing happened.
I was in a hurry to get to the fine work, so I painted an ant
and then I wrote my name across the forehead of a flea.
[LAUGHING]
Anything domestic like this truly innervates me.
Cash-monster, time-monster, thought police,
I keep painting.
I would paint the milkman, but he is already painted.
I'd like to get my brush inside that mole hole, the boob who
sold me this bill of goods.
The neighbors have witnessed my devotion
to this busted cesspool of a castle,
and now I am a deacon in the church of their values.
Silently, silently, we have painted ourselves
into this little plot of brown.
Actually it says Earth.
This little plot of Earth.
But now I'd like to paint something
more abstract like love or death or despair,
paint checkerboards on the idly curious, brand them.
Soon enough this cloud will have to be torn apart and patched
and then painted again.
My arms weigh about 3 tons, spaghetti legs.
Suddenly I feel drawn back to the ocean floor
which never needs painting.
There I plop my head on a hungry mollusk, adroit chiliastic sub
rosa luffing.
Adroit?
Dexterous in the use of the hands
or in the exercise of the mental faculties,
ready in invention or execution.
Chiliastic, the belief in Christ return to earth
to reign during the millennium.
Sub rosa, under the rose, covertly, privately,
confidentially.
Luffing, sailing his ship closer to the wind.
Which is to suggest that the house doesn't get painted.
A guy gets carried away looking up words in the dictionary.
[LAUGHING]
Just what he wanted to be doing all along.
[LAUGHING]