And When We're Bored We Dance

--  Influence #13:  The Lower Depths --

We eat eight times a day
Small meals
Big tickets
Big ticket items
Like tvs we found outside
The ivy league college
On moving day

When the rich kids
Head back to Barcelona
Macedonia, wherever
They go

We hook up the tvs
Sit on the found couches
Slouch down on office chairs
Oak desks now used
For Scrabble tournaments
Adorning doorways
With taxidermied stingrays
Praying for a day
When we can afford
To buy our own
Even if it's of a lesser quality

And when we're bored
We dance

We have sex two or three times
Whenever the mood strikes
We cross halls
Bang on walls
Letting the neighbors know
Their adultery's showing
Growing into porn stars
Slowly turning dirty
Flirty transformed into something
Something else
Then pelting each other
With bad names
Accusing insensitivity
Naivet'e braying
Laying down on mattresses
Without the sheets
Beating our heads
Against our bed boards
Hoarding snack food
Binging and cringing
Until we can get a new mood

And when we're bored
We dance

We're students
At state schools
Broke and joking
About being broke
Toking two times
Before class
Crass assertions
About our professors
Who profess while they digress
That we should be in
Better schools
Then where they teach

We're waiters
At restaurants
Where we can't afford
To eat

We're actors
Hauling ass into Boston
Lost in traffic
At three pm
Making our way
To an audition
For a tour of a show
That we're too old
To be in

We're twenty-somethings
Verging on thirty-somethings
Something funny
About the way you feel
When you peal twenty
From your body

We're vagabonds
We're ragamuffins
We're tramps
We're scum
We're heart breakers
We're indecisive
About what we are

And when we're bored
We dance

We measure our pleasure
By the amount of leisure
We can ensure for ourselves
Shelving our books
Into every nook
Under every floorboard

We read David Foster Wallace
Pass him around
Like a communal plate
Hating our lack of genius
And our negated potential
Mentioning to each other
How we'd smother one another
If mass suicide was decided upon
If we were a cult
And not living across
From a neon wonderland
Called 'Buy-A-Bunch'

We lunch with our parents
Who want us to grow up
And go to the ivy leagues
From whence we fence
Our Scrabble desks

They buy us salmon
Demanding that we plan
That we consider the future
And let go of the past
And we last long enough
To make it to dessert
Then desert them
At the table
Remembering that we needed
Money for the cable bill

We come home in July
Sit in cold showers
Staring out the bathroom window
Across the city
At the Section 8 tower
We know we'll wind up in
When our little dustbin
Is finally condemned

Some of us will move
Some of us will scatter
Some of us will shatter
And the latter will not
Be able to stick to anything
Live anywhere
That doesn't look like here

They'll get stuck
In the here and now
Fearing their next years
Until their tomorrows
Turn into untamed phobias

But until all that happens
We dance

We get bored
We get laid
We get fucked
We get stoned

And we're here
We're with family
And we're here
We're alone

And the music lingers
And sometimes it pounds
But it's around us
Like water around a drowning man
Or a blanket around someone cold

And we're old
And we're educated
And there's food
And there's boredom

And when we're bored
And we're always bored
And when we're bored
And we're tired
And we're always tired
And we're scared
And it's fun
And it's scary how fun it is
Because it burns out on impact
Like anything
That just can't last

And we dance
And we dance
And we dance