BEHAVE
“Rants” by Steve Tills
Sebastopol, 2004
80 pages

Rant 67

We all came down
to
the
wa-
ter
with our ships and shit
There was Homer
or maybe some Orange
juice, bro
And there was Ez
sucking it up,
a half century
of fire in the sky,
not a deep purple
micro-dot
(not even a mouse)
but alcohol to rinse the wounds
of 2-3-4 wars
all of which
could have been avoided
had several different
Trojans slipped into
their sheaths their dinky
little swords
and kept to themselves
The cream of the crop
was slaughtered
10,000 years
ago. Morons Rome /-
d eventually
Catal Huyuk, tho,
revered fertility
(goddesses, too), controlled
birth, connected
corpus collosums
enough to nourish
ambiguity
(of life) and
infinite contradictions
Well, we all came out
of
the water
and some spread seed
over the land
and replenished themselves
and some spread their seed
out of hand
and surprised themselves
at how easy it was
to murder and steal
And there was Oz
(like heavy metal)
sucking it up
smoking that shit
Or there was Ez
tripping his brains out
when he learned
the whole shabang
was unnecessary:
If the warriors and nomads
had merely asked,
been able to communicate,
and feel vulnerable, feminine
power,
the farmers would have said
“Here’s bread
and knishes and tempeh
and tofu and corn
enough for Everyman.
Tomorrow I’ll show you
how
to go down to the water
even when it’s a dry wind’s
been pushing your buttons
for decades.”
But the warrior smelled
blood, warm blood,
in the farmer’s big heart
and killed him
over and over
and had something like a Big
Mac attack because meat
makes men big
and muscular,
whereas grains merely
sustain life
so the farmers
of Catal Huyuk died,
and the warriors
repeated themselves,
Ez