Eight

"Tenuousness"
         -- Andrew Bird

Tenuous at best was all he had to say 
When pressed about the rest of it, the world that is
From proto-Sanskrit Minoans to Porto-centric Lisboans
Greek Cypriots and harbor sorts who hang around in ports a lot uh huh

Here's where things start getting weird
While chinless men will scratch their beards
And to their minds a sharpened axe 
Is brushed upon the Uralic syntaxes

Love of hate acts as an axis
Love of hate acts as an axis
First it wanes and then it waxes
So procreate and pay your taxes

Tenuousness, less seven comes to three
Them, you, us plus eleven 
Thank the heavens for their elasticity 
And as for those who live and die for astronomy

When coprophagia was writ
Know when to stand or when to sit
Can't stand to stand, can't stand to sit
And who would want to know this?
Click, click, click

Who wants to look upon this? 
Who wants to look upon this pray tell?
Who wants to look upon this?
Who wants to look upon this pray tell, pray tell?

Tenuousness, less seven comes to three
Them, you, us plus eleven comes just shy of infinity 
And as for those who live and die from numerology

https://youtu.be/I9rmwllw5q8

Coprophagia
             for Andrew Bird

I want to climb my way through 
         elevated words at once crunchy and dark,

multisyllabic latinate 
         homages to the Anglo-Saxon lexicon, 

scale mellifluous and strange up a 
         calligraphic ladder, 

scintillating, enigmatic, half euphoric, 
        epiphanic, breathing 

psychedelic diction, regurgitating 
         divine dictation, 

transcribing sacramental gibberish
         like an authentic citizen 

of ancient Babel, high and higher on her 
        impossible transcendental tower,

seeking with the best of them a peek
        at the Ultimate Power --

I want to fly like her, a legend in
        her own mind, and poise

at the top, one foot raised 
        in the second before

the fatal blow, flicker, click, linguistic
        deliquescence --

Required soundtrack: Andrew Bird’s Noble Beast.