Oh, the Huge Manatee!

I turned 40 today, which means I should be getting more sane and therefore less insane. In the brain. However, I just fought off an almost irresistible urge to write a blog about 21st century Greek mythology, which would include such deities as Afro-dite, a press-on nails wearing, smack-talking, snap-her-fingers-up-in-yo-grill sista, and Gay-res, the gay god of war who will bitch-slap you down to Gay-des, a kind of Underworld with really tasteless décor. Sigh… See what I mean? Why must I be tormented by these strange, unnatural visions?

Instead I offer you this meditation from the life of a large beer bottle.

Do you know why you are to blame for it all, with none of the responsibility falling on my foamy head? Hmm? Well, let’s see… Did I make you reach into the fridge last night and take me out and drink the contents of my bottle? Did I tell you not to eat any real dinner, but only have those two frozen 99cent bean and cheese burritos? Was I responsible when you finished me, and quickly reached for my brothers – one after another, and did I tie you down and force you to take those 7 shots of pure agave tequila? Was it I who removed your pants and convinced you to go running down the street in your underwear singing “Living the Vida Loca” at 1:00 a.m. on a Tuesday? Was I whispering in your ear when you were arguing with the cop, telling him he had bad breath and that his face looked like a “stupid shit face?” Was I in control of your rectum when, as the officer was placing the handcuffs on you, just in that very moment you emitted so deadly a cloud of noxious vapors that the officer charged you with a new form of assault – gaseous assault, and he had no choice but to cover the back seat of the squad car with a plastic tarp? Was it my doing that you passed out on the drive to the station, and that you woke early today, only to find yourself lying in your soiled underwear, facedown in a jail cell, your head five inches from a pool of dried vomit? The answer to all those questions, my dear friend, is “no.” No no no no.

By the way, since there are no actual manatees in this post, and you undoubtedly feel bitter and cheated about that, here is a poem about manatees. (Oh, I forgot to tell you that this is me talking again, and not the beer bottle)

Oh, the Huge Manatee!
By J.Dolla

O cruel time, waster of life,
Piss-poor backup band to Morris Day
Your joke is to suck out all our days
as day rhymes with day
Like a boy sucks the crème filling from his doughnuts
Or his donuts, and then discards the empty holes
In an invisible pile.
So you suck.

And my time is like a word written in vanishing ink
On onion skin paper
At very high altitude
During leap year
on February 28th.
The word is “negatory”
Which isn’t a real word,
Which is exactly my point.

And my days are like the teeth of a manatee.
Not many people see them, and yet that doesn’t mean
They are not the uncommon objects that no one has never
Thought to contradict as always refusing to never be absent
From the mouth of the manatee.

The manatee doesn’t exist in this poem, o reader.
He is merely a conceit so that I may use his image at the top
Without paying his copyright manatee lawyer, who also doesn’t exist.
This poem ends now.

J$  ¶ 1:49 AM