When sailing the seas of hideous idiocy, you will come across people who revel in being obstacles to excellence for everyone around them.  In grammatical terms, these are human nouns.  Often, they are hung up on their "pro-nouns."  When they ask you what your "pro-nouns" are, tell them you're opposed to nouns.  You're not pro-noun, you're anti-noun.  In fact, you're not a noun at all.

You're a verb.

When chasing the dragon of dope-nouns down the aluminum foil of personal delusion proves to be a tiresome, unnatural chore, and the mandatory sense of false security fails to provide comfort to the voluntary wilderness burning in your soul,

Pop on some of your favorite tunes,

Lean into a mellow groove,

And chase the snail instead.

I am a verb, you are a noun

(chasin’ the snail)

The sun comes up,
so I pull down the shades
because it makes me sad
to hear the sound of birds
when I'm feeling
bad

& I don't mean to be blunt,
but all I really want
is to smoke some herb
& get outta town
I am a verb,
you are a noun

The blacktop peels
back, to reveal
a railroad track,
and somewhere beneath the veins
of a valley rail,
lie the overgrown remains
of a dusty trail

& I’ve been traversin’ this trail
for 20-some years,
chasin’ the snail
& grindin’ the gears

               *          *          *

Don’t need no map
don’t need no I.D.
all we need to know is here we are,
and you are you,
and I am me

But how free can we really be,
with a mandatory sense
of false security,
sailing the seas of hideous idiocy?

               *          *          *

Now I’m looking at the walls
because how is a man
on a set of wheels
supposed to stand?

And when he falls
and his feet are buried
in the ground,
don’t count him out,
cuz he ain’t down,
he’ll still look you in the eye,
and say, “I am a verb, you are a noun.”

©July-September 2012 Nathan Payne