Burning Bird & Buzzard: An Aviary’s Questions & Answers on Fertility by Heather Elizabeth Buzzard © 2012
A Tale in 9‐Part Question and Answer Format, wherein the questions and the answers necessarily do not have squat to do with each other, and in which the questions sensibly speed the telling along with necessary narration of the two main characters and the answers do not do much in the way of lending clarity but rather bog down the issues with poetry, and leave the questions to do the real answering, as is generally the case with all questions and answers.
Table of Contents I. Q: Are You My Mothership? a: Burning Manmade By Hand II. Q: How Did the Llamas Get Loose? a: Burning Manta Ray of Light III. Q: What Are Some Ways To Stay Warm Without Catching Your Neighbors on Fire? a. Burning Manzanita IV. Q: What If This Is the Most Beautiful Color Already? a. Burning Manatees and Coffees V. Q: Everything Is Possible, Timing Is What? a. Burning Manners VI. Q: Why Do You Make What is to Burn Also Beautiful? a. Burning Mandalas VII. Q: Where Is Your Desert Centaur? a. Burning Mannequins and Kith VIII. Q: Who Brought the Temple? a. Burning Mangroves and Orchards IX. Q: Happy Birth!? a. Burning Mantis Prays Appendix A: Loose Llama Limericks
I. Are You My Mothership? And how it began, as usual, with not one mother but two young girls: A Bird and a Buzzard sat on a bed. The Bird said to the Buzzard, “What ho, mother!” and the Buzzard replied tactfully, “You aren’t, then!” They were not each other’s mother, they had decided. In fact, neither girl could find their mother at all. They looked high and low, under the bed and in the cupboard, in the jungle and in the ocean, on the mountain and in the valley, until the only places they hadn’t looked were the desert and the sky. They rested a while and painted their antlers gold and their hair pink in the meantime. Then the girls set out with a funny idea to find their mother, or, in their case, being girls with the small rudders, shiny paint and wishy‐washy sails of baby boats, to find their motherships. Bird dipped a turkey feather in a fat pot of Italian tomato ink, and Buzzard set quill to the inside of a papier mache face mask to pen their quest to the gods in overly excitable proposition: “When the desert and the sky mated, Burning Man was borne, and when they decided to open up the family towards progressive love, the desert married the water and the Mothership was begat. The Mothership, as motherships do, mated with the air and breathed out a flaming flock of balloon babies bursting with not only hot air, but also substance and seed. With some heavy breath, foot pumping action, and a good wind, we will fold up the world map so that the sand falls into the salty sea, the mountains make out with the moon, and our bike tires make A‐plus marks on the gold lined clouds. We will send shivers up the xylophone of your spine as we pummel across the land to celebrate the end of that world and the charmed birth of the new one. We will take you to a place where all the cannons are drum faces, all the smoke trails lead to an island full of
diamonds, all the anchors are feathers planted in your feet, and all the funerals pyres are birthing in heat. The story we have to tell is one of the shy earth's consummation with voracious heaven and the ensuing birth of the heartdrumbeat. 2012 is the year of the Granola‐pocalypse, and it's crunch time. Uniquely equipped with both nautical and aerial transportation methods, Bird and Buzzard may well be the only stragglers left squawking and crunching our way out of the end of the world panic, but, by golly, we plan on taking every Burner with us via the irresistible pull of percussion. As we sail smoothly across the sands with our wheels to make us go and our oars to make us flow, we will pick up not only speed but people. The passing out of drum sticks as we pass through the space will create a dialogue of spatial and spiritual importance. Akin to being tarred and feathered, we will be the sticky surface with which Burners can attach to and drum out their pleas, passions, fears, sweats and screeches. We are experimenting artists wondering how enormous of a communal drum beat is necessary to scare away the end of the world. It must be a coward, after all, if it hasn't reared its funny head by now. We dream of testing the waters and the skies to determine just how much is too much. In traditional South African villages, the medicine man or spiritual leader of the community is the only one permitted to keep drums in their home because of their sacred nature and power. In our world, everyone is a shaman and everyone has a drumstick of their own to beat on our large‐scale canvas. We will drum a progression in which the ship carries the bird, the bird leads the boat, the body leads the anchor, and the beat carries the body. As this year's heartbeat grows faint with the doubt and disillusion of the disenchanted, we will drum on board, on ship, on mother, on father, on side and inside, until the heartbeat grows strong again, until we pedal fast enough to lift off and fly away to the christening of the sky and the fire beneath it.”
The Bird and the Buzzard rolled off the bed into the nest beneath, folded their wings, and went to sleep for a very long time, long enough to build a boat, surely, or even a whole host of boats, if they hadn’t been so busy being golden and business birds dealing always with two seasons ahead. In time, though, the desert heard them and yawned, and they decided to try and sneak into its gritty cavernous mouth in the interim. They packed themselves both neatly into a hoop skirt and, with a push from a butterfingered neighbor, began to roll.
Burning Manmade by Hand discontent at high noon when the brief(Neko)Case wouldn't stay shut we are sure to get arrested by the lenscrafty camera police for taking too much truth and preserving it in square jars with round lids, honest the new moon likes girls that like even numbers because they are stable and nurturing, like us, we had two birthdays at once, with cheesecake, a labradoodle and a basset hound lolling on top of the cake wishing they could be inside where the nice girls live sunflowers walk around the desert with us, we could press them and take them as gifts, but to flatten such a thing of beauty wouldn’t that be like what cartographers did to all the world? the cats poo every morning regular as alarmclockwork and we think it's us but we don’t smell too bad yet, even next to Methasippee for poor m***heads with lisps and yet the charity: we traded in our two gold bikes for weightlessness and spared the pregnant, the flightless, from clawing papooses out with their own chicken scented hands Eutaw, Alabama and Cuba, Alabama, names so deceptively exotic they make our hair grow grey just thinking about if the music counts as minutes, traveling the humid misspelled Missip with signposted sunsets and loveboats sinking behind them so let's do shit, like inherit grandmothers with names to remember
II. How Did the Llamas Get Loose? Nice girls spit out their insides like llamas spit out their outside‐ins when someone takes them for a ride. Good girls get loose like llamas when the alpha males are sent to the front to compete for driving rights to the cranky carriage and they are left in the back to gossip and sew postcards like sentimental fabric. It took the Bird and the Buzzard ‐ who morphed seamlessly between llama and aviary body mass ‐ six days to fly across the country (wing troubles inclusive), once they had sorted out that rolling in a singular hoop skirt was a talent belonging to olde southern belles and them alone. They traveled with a cougar plus his two cubs and a bird of paradise, who began all his sentences with, “I was hanging out with a black mamba named TI one time and…” These mates made for gusty entertainment, eccentricity, variety of species and the spot‐on directional sense of the cat whiskered compass. The four odd trekkers blew out every candle lit between Alabama and Nevada, poked fun at the town of Chunky, MS, picnicked avocados in a church parking lot outside of Gators and Friends exotic animal roadside attraction in Shreveport, LA, held George the runty alligator by his duct‐taped mouth until he thrashed, doubled the population of Ghosttown, New Mexico for an afternoon of listening to the sad tales of sad people whilst waiting for sad tires to die, blinked and missed the Grand Canyon quite by accident but became believers in the bottomlessness of Lake Mono, climbed the lesser known Great Canyon which was a tad smaller but certainly easier for the cougar cubs, witnessed fellow llamas freer than even themselves walking down 40 West into the interminable sunset, played dust bunny to a couple of old couches in Santa Fe, donated two gold reindeer to those who would have had to walk to the north pole, called out a wildfire for its ostentation, and damned themselves into the gamble shack
that is the La Hacienda Hoover Dam, the poor man's Las Vegas strip. Llamas do as llama does; they spat, stomped, galloped, and groped their way across 14 states, both mental and physical. All was in order with the world, that late Sunday night in Reno when the water jug's bottom proved false and satiated the thirsty parking lot. The cougar and his babes said "Aho, Tahoe!" to California before the prayer of the Native American; they were dropped in bear country in the middle of the night to remind them of their cat‐ness, mischievous honeymonkeys in a vat of angry bees. It was decided that Yo Yo Ma only lived once, and so would they, so “YOLO” they cried, in his honor, banging away at the symphony of three wheels and a New Mexican sham donkey. And this is how they went.
Burning Manta Ray of Light pink airs around the head of a three point buck – not green but sharpened ‐ is enough of a calling card to play old‐fashioned camouflage games the gold dinosaurs of sunrise resurrect themselves along this road every morning the happiest cats suckle on spilled whiskey pants like the baby bottles of the French quarter, Louisiana the eyes cannot look at or buy hearts of gold untradeable, though they may drip with want they can then drink themselves
III. What are Some Ways to Stay Warm Without Catching Your Neighbors on Fire? The Bird and the Buzzard and the Other One of Paradise split like lickety after fifty‐one areas had been crossed and fifty‐ one territories nicknamed with the rolling llama tongue. They crash‐landed neatly in the sand amidst graceful hot air balloon sneaks and skydiving magpies, shocking as cold liquor at the bottom of a hot soup, but both a tonic for the heartsick. The first gift was a flappy tack Sparklehorse cd; the first reciprocity was a quarter handle of Jack Daniels sweat in the porta‐whatsit. The Bird and the Buzzard promised to tell everyone they found with their eyes that they were beautiful; they promised to sing with the gluestrung ukelele each other of three beautiful people they found each day. Stick kept them warm that first day by shaping a makeshift nest out of his body when their eyes were closing, and they dreamed of mud. That is one way to keep warm. Also one may engage in a cheap and impromptu soccer game with a roll of toilet paper and a can of lighter fluid. Just make sure not to kick it into the bar, or there may be other flammable liquids involved that you would rather imbibe than engage in another round of footie. Another way is a mother, but that may catch your neighbor on fire if you’re not careful about the hotness.
Burning Manzanita Gary Snyder wrote of manzanitas in the desert, but nothing grows here only dragonfly hallucinations out of desperate creativity’s disapproval with the surroundings a fly would be a welcome wildlife, heralded as the dove‐ish proof of life after the flood cultivating a relationship with the earth without plant or animal to say how the twin names of the towns in our stomachs, Flora and Fauna, will hopefully balance the intestinal cataclysmic change of the pale lavender sandglobe, adjustment to a new climb
IV. What If This Is the Most Beautiful Color Already? “If you breathe now, you will probably die,” the man wearing the black grizzly told them disapprovingly. “You will not survive. Have you even been to where the desert nips at the buds of your heels?” The man in black, a copper beetle, planted himself in front of Bird and Buzzard and they went around him pertinently in the shape of the love from the Hug Deli cinnamon bun swirl. On the day when days had a question mark still and were yet unformed, dementha set in and its minty influx spited sweetness. The antlers became a two‐pronged dance partner and the bird's hat two nest eggs for the century's second try at fecundity, thwarted only by the blonde locks and keys to the grave at Barbie death camp where subjects learned to stand up straighter without books or heads. The aviaries traveled by embrace and disgrace, dancing with their fathers and other unknown relatives. Birds generally get on quite well on the rounded rumps of bikes or horses, and so they did, trading in their copper steers for bigger karma, as if that were the most beautiful color already.
Burning Manatees and Coffees bring your tectonic plates to the table and feast with the forks of the road, left and right, salt and pepper, the knives of the round, brown table again, bring your dust bowl to the water table and drink! the rain fly flies away to shelter someone else with taut invisible wings a box full of two dollar cow teeth are the most teeth we will find in this cage of drinkers, hiding their costume jewelry inside the pearl‐painted Navajo‐Hopi Genuine Indian Treasure Box sculpture art makes pizza for free with the crispy tectonic crusts of the earth when we were too nice to ask whether she was a girl or a boy but now look, we gave all our good horses away and they came back to us a different color, calling themselves ascension and flying with hidden built‐in sails
V. Everything Is Possible, Timing Is What? For many days, beer fell from the sky every afternoon in a small white parachute. But only if Bird and Buzzard stood around long enough without expecting it. They learned that if you fall, it is best to roll and hit approximately five and no less than three chairs and take them down with you so they too may enjoy the proximity of sand and make a whole big jolly bang up of the whole thing in hopes that a Crayola color may be named after the event. They learned to crawl under the stars and turn the lights on for everyone to enjoy and so as not to run about in a black world bashing into each other. They learned that Anubis burns like a dog who's done wrong and come to lick it up.
Burning Manners how rude to disentangle the porn from the doughnuts, let’s clip them together and hang them in some BDSM tent to dry now, for the homeschooler: geography and pornography and donut holes in a space tent, fingerprinting each other during insanely high fives, four seasons and no change playing metal music in the tip jar, three turns at luck in a foil lantern, two stars fighting to the death, wonderland passes the cup to be polite and dark at once the bare redhead and the playa‐vulture hiked to the west coast for a free manicure and a ladybug nail scent and sand sculptures in their nostrils on national publically‐acceptable nose‐picking day, you can pick your nose but not your clothes…what is that? you can big your poison but not your soulmate, what is that? the black and white photoshoot to make time seem less for a mome. the shamanic birth and death ritual fractaled vision as badly as if all music came from a microphone, as badly as if eyes lived on the walls of the lonely Baalmart, smoke, dance, and spirits are the true trinity, if anyone comes asking Targay comes out from beneath the closet door sloughed in mothballs casting spells to catch fish with last year’s hooks clearly overrun with dirty feet, the manors of this land need house‐sitting
VI. Why Do You Make What is to Burn Also Beautiful? And so it came to pass that Bird and the Buzzard spent time making each other beautiful, and by the time they had finished it had become dark and their hair had become entangled with their feet. The lights of their Mothership, too, were already dim and now had been extinguished altogether in the wind. The Bird and the Buzzard mourned the darkness and how it would not highlight the gold leafed pincushions under their bottom eyelashes, but once they had stopped leaking they arose and realized the moon was full. “And how!” said Bird. And “Quite right!” replied Buzzard, and they traversed the desert now by moonlight clear until dawn, when the gold had drooped off anyway to leave little patterns on the sand for the sun to fidget with in the bright hours.
Burning Mandalas the oracle sat and told us to write our dreams down, for they are the only thing that doesn't burn the biggest rooster and its hardy synonym, traded and applied for soulmates, secret bathhouses, private hair shapings, the disco fish, braided air, swinglines to paradise, plastic nests of zipties, good spanking spots, 90 second weddings, falsified ink feathers, free boutiques with men in cut‐up wedding dresses, a freedom only found in pina colada, infinitipis, a carton bar of old eggs yolking up a sandstorm… these all burn, but we will work until the last minute on what will soon perish
VII. Where Is Your Desert Centaur? Everybody else has one, so Buzzard wrote hers a letter with bad tipsy handwriting in the dark on a notebook from the Dalai Lama who had much more patience than she (fortunately omitting most of the “I’m missing you” bits, which generally add no value to a correspondence aside from the blushing pleasantdom of the recipient): Burning Man Summertime 2012 Year of the Gold Antlers My Cougar, my eternal love, my sacred space, my lover man‐boy, my nirvana, my moonpineapple, the other half of my last name, the tree to my wings: Aho, Tahoe! We have been here for 24 hours and I am a dust receptacle. I find myself missing you around every corner: in the tall bikes (many!) that pass my short one, in the swing dance music, train boats and coffee crews. Last night we went to a whiskey tasting that the unicorns at the end of rainbow led us to, and rode around on a three story dinosaur with dancing poles and firing cannons, then a wire snail carried us miles over the desert to a brick facade with spanks and Starbucks coffee. Everything is spanks here. Everything is man's greatest desires founded in one large basis of revelry, every luxury come true in a harsh environment. We found given bikes to make up for our ones that we gave and biked to the distant art formations we thought were stars but turned out to be more unicorns (imagine! And we thought we were the last!) at the end of the world after modeling what can only be described as the Dozen‐Layered Blind&DumbBohemian look at the Kostume Kult, where you could have everything you could walk out with. Bird was a gold
mummy and I a very large and unfashionable teddy. I miss you…(omitted). It makes me want to screw it all and dash headlong towards the fence to hitchhike to Lake Tahoe where you and the babes are! The last hours of my world have been so: four course Indian dinner post whipping, trampoline, cat‐themed burlesque show with two bottles of champagne (melon and bacon), monkey bars, hijacking painted face masks, a full moon ceremony, the lighting of the 24‐7 timestar – “everything is possible, timing is everything” ‐ then we moonbathed on a sunken pirate ship to dubstep and dust, huddling with fresh dark and stormy cocktails in an extravagant yurt with the most crayola of crayolas in the box, finding a blue cloud and accompanying Barney with mushrooms and vodka olives to the north star, arriving at the temple at sunrise with a billion other organisms, naked salutation acro‐gum tree yoga with the checkerboard juicy brothers who drive a pink lobster, the fiddler crab ride across the desert, an accidental breaking of the fast, a sunbear nap. There is chanting of lullabies at the chandelier bar, a million furs and feathers around me, I am slothed in garter sauce and oasis nectar. Here, we alternate between falling into epic slumber right after dinner, and then dancing until sunrise and not sleeping for days on end. I got two temporary tattoos, though feathers are banned out here and all I really want is a feather, and one is a spiny branched tree on my upper left thigh, the other is the Burning Man man on my side left thigh. I was gifted a tube of henna, a wooden necklace, a cinnamon bun hug at the Hug Deli, aromatherapy perfume, and a cuddle puddle plus dreamcatcher, and have been writing limericks for everybody like mad as my gift. We live in such a demented carnival of freaks. Every secret desire or instinctual compelling frenzy of humanity could come true out here: your every wish is guaranteed to be granted: techno‐laced flying magic carpets, donut orgies, sex slavery,
talking gods, the fountain of youth in a shot glass. Every channel of power, submission, gluttony, will, imagination, magic, evil, good, terror, want, shock, and love craving can be satisfied here. Yesterday (?) I hung out with a silver haired fox in an Irish jig pub instrumental jam session with as many kegs of Killians as there were Irishmen, I had a head wash and massage by a beautiful hairbear, I joined forces with a certain fearsome sixsome to go to Sin City yoga, a pale purple lavender thronged art car bar, an orgy tent (!), a jokes‐for‐shots stage, a two‐seater mutant bike with wheels the size of SUVs, and a full moon bacchanalia. Today (?) I woke in a sandstormy whiteout (in which you can see not a thing but the white lights of the sand man god!), witnessed a few weddings on my way to the spirithouse for a mocha latte (and spanks), got a deep foot treatment, cooked tofu scramble and guacamole and bacon for 80 people, practiced qi gong at Nectar Village and a five rhythms dance church tribal leaders movement and synchronicity workshop (and spanks), spooned down a allegedly medicinal rum punch, biked to a pasty making party in preparation for Critical Tits and gave up power reiki in favor of (spanks). Day 5 of "I have never turned down so many drinks in my life": we encountered a man named Friendly today who slathered us with fertility tummy massages with a blanket in a blanket ocean even though I told him I wasn’t planning on being fertile for another 5‐8 years. This place is part freak powwow, part exfiend kinkfest, part drunken brawl, part insanity extractor, part celebration of the paradox filth and beauty of humanity, part alien tribal dance, part self‐worship, part masochism. I made a waistbelt to attach all useful things to, like knives and caribeners and seeds and starburst and corsets, and it was adorned with feathers by a magician. I wish you were here…(omitted). Today, in the middle of a desert‐wide whiteout, we were biking and heard, "Grilled cheese, VIP parking, and spanks?" and a man
stepped out of the white sand in a loincloth apron and discovered us. He wheeled our bikes over to VIP parking, a nondescript bit of desert about 5 feet away from where we stood, and we were spanked with a spatula used then to make grilled cheese with a fried egg in the middle. Also, I learned a spirit movement method of working with conflict in relationships should it ever arise, using the word, "Jaya", and remind me to show you because it's dreadfully fun. Honey, I miss…(omitted) And then, following a worm‐green driven art car night playa adventure dance, Bird and I had the most absolutely life‐changing yoga from this mama who called us bitches every twenty seconds, followed by an accidental and rather unfortunate workshop we happened upon on how to talk dirty (more like dirty STALKing for these folks) to your partner (does this count? “Would you like to ride with me on my spotted dick? It does not come in a can.” NO). So we ran away as fast as we could from that debacle to a group full body steam bath, flatbread and peanut butter honey, and a fermentation tasting. I will not be going to a Burning Man in the future without you. So far the Rainbows and the Burners are the closest I have known to kinship, womb boat buddies. Come with me, my love, and dip yourself in the slimy marinade of the revolution! It turns out that you, my dear, were my lost and found desert centaur all along! There are two telephone booths out here on the playa: one allows me to call you, and one allows me to call God, each for three minutes. I’d rather be talking to you than god, but there’s a shorter line for him, so gotta go. As Bird says in naughty words workshops, “My grandfather has a barn, wanna do it the hay?” All my love, Buzzard
Burning Mannequins and Kith kindly allow me to safety pin in my pens before we begin to pour the champagne into the melon rinds for the burlesque show of champion kitties earlier, we were kidnapped and told to paint face masks when we wanted to be naked and skinned, we jumped into each other's messy minds on the campoline and there are only two allowed at a time because humans are notorious for messy minds, girls in particular earlier still, we drank of "joy" "vitality" and "forgiveness" without knowing their power, finding protection from the sun by way of free abandoned sunscreen in the mud. swinging couches to'd and fro'd with us before the alice tea party with black smoke hookah mushrooms there is air in the light, we got patches at the gift store, alligator heads around our heavy necks there is always somebody sleeping, dreaming for us when we cannot possibly, the monkey swings from bar to bar sneaking shots when the tenders aren't keeping up
VIII. Who Brought the Temple? Every party of people must necessarily bring something to contribute to the party at large. But in the instance of a grand party, and everyone who knows much knows that the act of finding one’s Mothership involves a very large party indeed, who is to bring the all‐important temple? The punch was brought by the spikedrivers, the lamps by the lamplighters, the tunes by the beatweavers, the ships by the pirates, the green worm by the mole tunnelers, the cornucopias by the unicorns, the favors by the ravers, but who on god’s desert earth was to bring the temple? It was perhaps the most important thing of all, and certainly the thing that everyone kept most quiet about. Or else parties may leave with a taste of, “I went to Burning Man and all I saw was this lousy mirage,” from the disenchanted desert wanderer who spilt her water on the way in, and nobody wants that kind of mess to clean up.
Burning Mangroves and Orchards little triangles all over our hands invited by the dust, marking one being from the other as the little boxes on the horizon mark our homes the girl wearing a "24 hours of silence" sign and a notepad and sharpie around her neck is offered hot fruit tea and a bow and arrow this is what not talking does to people that day we henna'd each other false compasses, stretching north to the south, reversing east and west to make worlds of our own liking at Foxglove at 4:15. and the cantankerous goose duck dressed in gossamer and flew into our new direction without warning
IX. Happy Birth!? The Bird and the Buzzard attended the birthday party for movement in its natal innocuousness. 43‐year‐old Sharie leapt out of the icing on the cake: “There are three kinds of shit: your shit, my shit, and god’s shit! Don’t mess with anyone’s shit but yours and for god’s sake, MOVE everyday!” she exploded. “I was in open warrior II for three months in training in India until I cursed my instructor’s name and forgave him in between the mountains and he forgave me for not moving and that’s what I mean, bitches!” she flailed her arms like a sundial in a solar eclipse and spun circles in the pink rosettes.. “Now, bitches, I want you to look in the mirror like it’s your partner in open circle and love yourself to TEARS!” and she fell back into the cake and there was movement as the desert had never seen, every creature grabbing big thick slices of vanilla and brown bending backwards over their neighbor if necessary and everyone eating it and moving, too. “Don’t reach for what you don’t need! Have your own sacred space and don’t let NOBODY take that away from you! Live with an open heart, goddamit! Be good to yourself! Kneel to Gaia everyday, kiss your mother, kiss the earth, you are only ever fighting with yourself!” she hollered through layer sheets of black and pink tears and knelt back into the cake which was busy remaking itself and relit its candles for the spirit of movement, always in motion, backwards or fore. And the crowd jeered and danced and ate and exploded and knelt into the earth in the greatest dance church that had ever moved, and Bird and the Buzzard looked at each other with cake on their faces and vanilla frosting sunscreen. “What ho!” said Bird to Buzzard. And, “She is, then!” Buzzard replied. And they knelt before their newly known mother, knees imprinted with sand patterns and eyes in the mountains.
That night Bird and Buzzard lined upstream with the smoking salmon in line for the hot steam springs, howling naked with the choir in the glittering bath, to be cleaned of cake and sand and pink hair and everything all at once.
Burning Mantis Prays the headless mantis was doomed to be so since its inception, by virtue of its strange love, and now we sing its song to commemorate the decapitation of the mantis, the burning of the man: everything looks like a rattlesnake. give me a birthday, I'll give you a cake, out in the desert of the desert Dessert. I lived in a llama and rode on a yurt
Appendix A: Loose Llama Limericks To the volunteer hairdresser who washed my brittle white hair when it had enough sand in it to regroute the Sahara and had me considering a clean shaved start: Oh, thank you for washing our hair It's full of dust we're well aware So lovely the washing We're feeling pishposhing! Don't need on our heads now to Nair! To our poledancing comrade and protector on the playa: There once was a fellow called Drew He's a purple a hula‐baloo Adept on the pole He's young and not old And his compass is beaut'fully askew! To Dallas of the Timestar who is exceptionally talented at setting stars on fire on time: There once was a fellow named Dallas He was part of the Wonderland Alice To him: happy birth! We shall blow out the earth! And wish him all love never malice! To Fish of the Spirit House, who saved us from the nasty pathogen (borne of only water even in the desert, nonetheless!) known as caffeine withdrawal: There once was a fellow named Fish Who serves such a wonderful dish His beard made of cheer Makes coffee o'er beer!
His beans grant our every wish! To the Keeper of the Timestar, Sir Smith of the Charlie variety: There once was a camp full of ASS Burning stars full of sparks full of sass Long live Charlie Smith Our kin and our kith We thank him for welcome en masse! To the Silver Gypsy Goddess herself, shrouded in word and wile: The queen of the desert is Lori We found her in the ASS camp of glory To us she is dear She's an oracle seer And for everyone she has a story! To he who met us on the playa at sunrise on the third or fifth day, and invited us to ride in his fiddler crab with him: There once was a fellow named Juicy Who met us at sunrise so loosey He sat on a cloud In the playa dust shroud As we watched the morn so Doc Seussy To the Watts family c/o San Francisco, who let us decompress from the desert in their home, and their factory‐noodly neighbors: There once was a warehouse of Watts Full of all sorts of wonderful pots We've brought in some cats To clear out the rats From the noodles of which there are lots!
And to the young Master of the house, on his 13th birthday: Thirteen is the best of all years Bringing black caps and skulls and no fears To you, happy birth! You'll traipse long on the earth And just eight years until you'll drink beers!