Vesuvius - Vic Chesnutt

Trying to clip the creek to the bank with a clothes pin

Waterlogged system, rusty spring, faulty planning

Logic squeezed out like mustard at a corndog

Hypertension is not wisdom, chewing the leather straps

Trying to hold the sun still with a bobby pin

Burned fingers.

excellent conductor of heat

Private fantasies are not public policy

Christian charity is a doily over my death boner

Busy work is not the Great Wall of China

Vanity bamboo hut out back behind the big house

Pretend is salve for whitey-boy guilt

Furiously slapping at the moon with a cane pole

Trying to prop up the heavens with a fresh flat pencil

Some folks are allergic to rubber

I am trying to stitch this one to all the rest of them

But the seams will split, collide and cleave

Neopolitan ice cream is never truly integrated until it’s too late

Trying to stop the bleeding with scotch tape

Platelets spoil adhesion, fire up the cauterizing iron

It’s a branding of necessity not scarification

Bliss was a pimple that I tried to pop

It erupted up and out on my countenance

Ugly eruption, Vesuvius, ugly eruption, Vesuvius

Ugly eruption, Vesuvius

Vesuvius at myself, Vesuvius at myself