doing it

"do it, bill." "i'm not sure i want to" ""you have to." "i'm not ready yet." "just do it, bill. it's required." "but - " "you have no choice." "oh, all right." "that's better." bill did it. "next!" "what's your name?" "bob." "what's your number?" "1-3373-7637-6598-6881" "that's a prime number." "so they tell me" "you mean you can't tell yourself?" "not really." "not very bright, are you?" "i guess." "you guess? not really? not much for explicit statements, are you, bob?" "if you say so." "you're a pretty poor excuse for an excuse, did anyone ever tell you that?' "not until you came along. you're a big meanie. " "that's all well and good, bob, but are you ready to do it? are you ready to step up?" "no." "no? just no?" "i was trying to be explicit." "good one. score one for bob." "thank you." "back to square one. seriously, all joking aside, are you ready to do it?" "not really. i would prefer not to." "let there be no misunderstanding here. you are going to do it if we have to sit here all month. but if we have to do that, if we have to sit here for a month or a year, there will be some very annoyed people, only beginning with me. do you understand?" "more or less." "are you ready to do it?" "yes." "good." bob did it. "next!" "what's your name?" "buck." "what's your number?" "2-4595-3941-7845-3674." "that's a pretty tedious number." "whatever." "i like your attitude, buck. are you ready to do it?" "absolutely. put me in, coach." "all right. did you hear that, stanley? buck is a hero. congratulations, buck, you're our first hero of the day." "let's do it." buck did it. "next!" "what's your name?" "buddy." "what's your number?"

sometimes you can't go home again even though you never left

a friendly fish named frank always stayed near the surface of the tank the vast vistas of human faces in his mind always stirred up traces of an empire that long ago sank if the comte de sade came back to earth and saw the new cosmos giving birth oceans of pornography vampire novels from sea to sea what would his dreams be worth? an unknown prophet named slim couldn't swim he was thrown in the water but old pharoan's daughter just turned up her nose at him blind potato murphy played the blues he walked the hills of ireland in his alligator shoes he drank poteen dreamt of fair kathleen and paid his union dues bob, a humble barracuda sought the path of the true buddha a dinosaur banging a big brass gong followed as he walked along and quite destroyed his mood, ah a sunfish named stagger lee lived in the depths of the sea a sea lion named bob (or was it billy?) thought his paraphilological positions were silly and never invited poor stack to tea an electric eel named ed wore a path to perdition on his head he didn't know its approximate cause so he kept it wrapped in gauze and took another med a platypus named roy was no stranger to ecstatic joy he could feel the earths heart beat beneath his wary webbed feet but his demeanor remained quite coy