It's Perfectly Simple

It’s perfectly simple                isn’t it,
as easy as one two three.

First you breathe it all in
and then you breathe it all out,

in first                         then out

fill and release                fill and release

a perfectly simple sequence to live and die by.

(and when you hitched a ride on my zephyr, baby,
we blew past the moon and shot for the stars, didn’t we,
because anyway, isn’t that where it all begins and ends?
          
                         Well, isn’t it?)

When you see someone, smile,
especially if they’re a stranger.

Why should I?               Why shouldn’t you?     
                              
What’s so complicated about that, and
besides, there’s nothing to it anyway,
remember?                    Remember?

Right back at cha, sport!

When I was just a young boy
it was all so very simple indeed.
There was always family and friends
and places to play and plenty of fresh air
so that’s what we did all day, breathe,
because that’s all there was and that was enough
and we never thought twice about it.

The farmer’s corn was just a mirage
only to conceal our sexual secrets.
Somewhere out there a fort, in ten,
down twenty, in twenty, down ten,
in ten, down twenty, you get the picture.
Ears stripped, stalks bent and crushed to the ground
as the green scent filled our flaring nostrils
with the incense of our innocent lives.

But wasn’t it just the other day
I asked you is this all there is?

                         Well, wasn’t it?

                         Well is it?

Is it really just a matter of, you know, survival?

And you answered
what’s wrong with that,
isn’t survival enough?          
                         Well, isn’t it?

Yesterday a storm passed swiftly through and
when it was over I saw custard-colored clouds
and plunging elevator shafts of light
and as the sun began to sink
jet streams stretched the stratus pink and
then twisting golden and purple and
over there an old man with a jutting chin
is smoking a corn cob pipe
but then right before my eyes
he changes into an amoeba
before he disappears or
is it just a wispy dream?
Well I suppose the imagination
makes all things possible.

                         Well, doesn’t it?

And doesn’t it exist just for us to enjoy,
and when will it wither away and go back
into the nothingness from whence it came?

Maybe it has nothing to do with breathing:
nothing at all except that our breath is what
separates us from our innate sense of streaming joy.

                         or does it?

It seems like the more I think about it
the more confusing it becomes,

                         doesn’t it.
                         
                         It does.