SHOW AND TELL

      When I first saw you

      I liked you You

      didn’t come on the way

      you thought you came on

      My first impression of you was

      you’re a person

      who I’m really glad to know

      who’s interested

      in intellectual thoughts and true meanings of things

      and I figured

      since I was so glad to really get to know you

      you’d be pretty glad to get to know me

      and maybe I would touch your face with my hands

      like I’m in the process of doing now

      and look at you at arm’s distance

      and then closer in

      when and if it’s ok with you

      and we could walk out of this room

      arm-in-arm or shoulder-to-shoulder

      just touching every other step or so

      and go get a coke

      or a pepsi and some grilled cheese

      I really’d like a cheeseburger more

      and talk about books and movies

      and just exchange

      if you’d want to do that with me

      intellectual thoughts

      and true meanings Just

      about ourselves We would be able

      to share and explore

      all the little thoughts and feelings

      that really can mess up the day

      if things don’t go right

      and all the quote irritations of modern living unquote

      that Chekhov discussed so well

      and then maybe we could learn to be friends

      in this process of discovering

      what makes each other tick

      Pass me a cigaret

      and pass me a cup of coffee Maybe

      if we learn to really like one another

      I’ll sit next to you the next session we have

      and Bob and John and Alice and Kit

      and you and me

      will move our chairs a lot closer together

      and really begin to understand

      what really makes us tick in the mind

      and straighten out our true meanings

      We’ll call each other on the phone

      write letters and postcards to each other

      when we’re away for vacation

      and write poems about what we do each day

      and really all the love

      even while a lot of loneliness exists in the world

      and how we learn each other’s quirks

      We’ll better cope with anything and anyone

      that might come up and we might meet

      and we’ll rent a farm

      and start a commune

      that probably won’t be as easy as starting a car

      and we’ll skinny dip in the pond

      take planes to Europe

      help the disadvantaged and underdeveloped

      make the world a better place to grow in

      and when we get old

      we’ll look back on all this

      and know just know

      just six of us had the power

      to change the course of things

      by learning to get along better

      and it all started

      with us sitting down

      looking each other straight in the eye

      and rapping