Pall malls and a player piano   The dog eared pages of some manifesto   Souvenirs in a Bagombo Snuff Box   A satiric smirk behind a thick gray mustache   Membership to the ghost shirt society   And some bad chemicals that made me do strange things   Consciousness of a human condition   And a taste for science fiction   Ice nice and some polywater   A litho print from a potato barn   And air of contempt toward Nick Nolte   A fear of bombs and love and the 22nd century      And so it goes   And so it goes   Until you're unstuck in time   Fates worse than death   Don't hold your breath   There's an asterisk before your name    Hi ho, hi ho      Low-brow jabs and a coffee high   Cautionary tales, truths, and lies   A vision of a brave new dystopia   Of technological advancement and waxing nostalgia   Some granfalloons and wampeters   And an unclaimed birthday cake   History is a list of surprises   Addressed through metafiction devices   Collected works, essays, and shorts   And the ashes from the Drake School furnace   "There’' one rule that I know of, babies   Goddammit, you've got to be kind."      We are what we pretend to be   So we must be careful of what we pretend to me   These are things I stole from Vonnegut's grave