Ken Nordine Follow

Down the Drain
By Ken Nordine

It's about time you know the secret.
I have...a think-it-yourself kit...and you can buy it yourself too.
It tells you how to let your mind go.
You see, I discovered that taking warm baths made me feel relaxed.
We live in a very neurotic society,
And they use hydro-therapy in hospitals for those who are neurotic.
And I have a bathtub.
So I take hot baths.
But I've developed themes and variations.
Now I take a sitting down shower.
You see, you can take a much hotter shower sitting down
Because the water cools as it goes through the air.
And I lie there and let the shower rain on the nape of my neck;
Right there where the hypothalamus is in the medulla oblongata
And pretty soon I feel all of the motor nerves of my body relax;
It's wonderful.

I turn the shower off;
And I lie back and turn the hot water on and I stare up at the steam fantasies.
OH! I almost forgot; you have to get yourself and emulsifying oil.
You put a cap-full of it in and it's blue in color.
And then there's another thing -- a scented kind of green fluid;
You put two parts of that in-
And then the willy-nilly of the green mixes with the jibble-jabble of the blue
And it alls begins when you slide down the drain.

Somehow you make your way through the plumbing miraculously,
Through the twists and the turns and you come out in the Caribbean
Doing the back-stroke beautifully toward the Virgin Islands
And you come ashore like a canoe
And you stand up and your suit is so beautifully pressed.
You climb the nearest sand hill and right below you
Imported from Indiana for the tourists
Is the mating dance of the sand hill cranes;
And you sit there and you talk with your neighbors,
Each one is named Mr. Smith and he says, “I’m average,”
And you say, “I am too!”
And it’s lovely to look at love when you’re average…

But then you gotta get back, you gotta get back;
And that’s the hard thing—to make the film go backward until finally
You’re crawling back through the sewer,
Up through the pipes;
Somehow you make it back through the drain,
And then the reality of where you are
Brings you back.