This delectable cross between Dr. Seuss and Dante’s Peak was first written and performed in 2008. Like the malleable world it depicts, it has undergone all kinds of revisions every few years since. This latest iteration is likely not the last.
imagine an ice cream world!
O how fabulous
how wonderful it would be
to find streets paved
with toffee and chocolate cream
our cities rise high with skyscrapers of cone
where they rest upon the mountains that were scooped long ago
and the mint chip jungles where the gumdrops grow.
now let me speak of our beachheads—they’re peaches and cream
and the swedish fish seas are gallons of soy dream.
with pralines and cream in the east,
pistachio in the west as far as eyes do see.
oh, it’s a yummy world,
an ice cream world.
the neighbors wave hello
and we greet them from afar,
from our marshmallow cars and our syrup-drenched yards
I say, “good morning, bob!”
“rocky road… and it’s on the road… that’s so cliché,” he quips
and now he’s shoveling out vanilla in front of his driveway
you see, last night hit hard,
and now our front lawns are marred
by mini mochi balls
(the manna of the new millennium)
but no one’s really that bothered.
after an hour or two, I’m at my brother jeff’s place
and we talk about sports and new flavors of sorbet
“hey jack,” my brother says, “remember the good old days?
how we’d slide on down to the schoolhouse rock
on graham cracker sleds and big box tops?
we’d smack each other with snowballs
whack our teachers with swirly straws…”
I said, “yeah, those days were fine, but now the better times are here!
my friends and I are happy now. this cream, it blankets every fear.
there’s no war, there’s no strife
there’s no sun that’s in our eyes…”
even the tears that we might cry, they taste like sugar in the night.
it’s all good from here. there’s nothing wrong here.
and then we talked about our wives beneath the bubble gum skies
it was a perfect day.
an ice cream day.
we had fro-yo for breakfast
and donuts over lunch.
(of course in all these things
we discount that the sun is hot
not just a shiny scoop of banana)
when the eclipse lifted
there was nothing left to talk about,
just everybody thinking how
they could flag down some surfboards
or just run for their lives
on butterfinger beach, our cream castles ebbed away
and the seagulls up above melted into milky waves
the tide trickled down itself
absorbing all the colors of the wind
and all the flavors of the pier
by 10am on Monday morning
the entire shore had disappeared
“good evening belvedere, I’m darryl softie.
lactose intolerance is on the rise
and the icecaps are melting tonight
together with this newsroom, my wardrobe
and your television set. stay calm.”
but we couldn’t even find our way home.
by five the swamp tide had grown to forty feet high
and much polluted by-by
with discarded flavors
like tuna melt and dirt cup
a past we couldn’t leave behind
now there’s children in the flood
there’s houses sinking in the mud
I’ve seen couples torn apart by great chasms filled with fudge!
it’s a world that’s overrun by the silly things that we love.
where the rocks can slip away
and the stars drip through our fingers
what’s become of our existence?
what’s corrupted all our plans?
O sally, sweet love, precious dear
the world it melts again,
it’s now the sixth time this year!
and now I wonder to myself if we would ever be sincere
to say there’s a thing left on earth
not made of dastardly ice cream
last week I saw the doctor
they showed me x-rays of my chest
and would you believe it dear—
my heart—it was a red and yellow creamsicle.
