Sweet Sediments by Todd Rundgren - Upper Darby High School 1966



The drinking of some saccherin-sweatened tea, and the subsequent death of my taste papillae has caused me great oral suffering. I feel the need to express, but the pitiable condition of my tongue prevents my speaking efficiently. I turn, therefore, to writing. Great with the need of an idea, I went scrambling through reams of past material, looking for an undeveloped tidbit. After discarding all that was derogatory towards dear old Derby Alma Mater mine, I was left with about four literary morsels. I had to discard two as being (some garbage about decadence in public gatherings), and the forth for being generally unsavoury. Thn, like so many nightmares, some new ideas passed before my stupified eyeballs; one about a man who got lip cancer free for Raleigh coupons; one about a man who goes crazy talking to a chatty-cathy doll during the big Northeastern power failure; one about dying and having to spend the rest of eternity hitch-hiking in the Lincoln Tunnel. But that last hallucination (surely worthy of any LSD onslaught) aroused a rather bemusing (don't bother looking it up, it means idiotic) idea. I decided to take a whack at writing my own eulogy. After all, all of the big literate do ie.

Here lies me (I?).
and none too confortable either.
Don't whisper, I can hear you!
You want to know why I wanted to be buried with my money,
all 35 million of it.
Maybe you can't take it with you, but I'm not planning to go anywhere anyhow.
But why sould I tell you?
Help! Dig me up quick!
I've been burried alive!
Blah! I think I'd rather be dead than have that on my tombstone. The siege of ideas continued: The Big Five revisited; Tom Swift and His Electric Tumbleweed; and a trilogy in unmittigated sex and perversion, the Rufous Perpiration: Larry, Moe, and Curley. Why do all my ideas have to be so gory? Perhaps I should try writing something peacefull and consoling, like a love ode.

LOVE IN RETROSPECT

Soft! The dog creeps in on
little cat feet and is gone,
What is it? I before thee
Except after C.
The air is heavy with the
Exotic smell of sheep dip
Your hair, like so many frayed corn silk cigarettes.
Drool.
Your eyes like a
couple of UFO's.
Thou unreasonable utilitarian.
Art thou stoicistic?
Fie!....Fee!Foo!Fum!
And this my beloved.
Chiquita Banana.

For some reason this poem gives me an uncomfortable feeling in my gastro- intestinal tract. Like a great wave, the horrors of my imagination fall over me again. "Santa tells the kiddies where to go"; "MY Family Tree and other agricultural Oddities"; "Cheese and I". Words cannot relate my unfathomable frustrations. My emaciated taste buds will not permit me to utter a half decent four-letter word. Ah, but wait! I'll write about! My School! After all, nobody has ever written anything at all about this school! How original of me!

SCHOOL FOREVER!

As long as I shall breathe the air
Or gaze upon the sky,
I shan't forgate
My Alma Mate
Sweet Upper Darby High.

Thine alabaster classrooms gleam
Undimmed by students feet.
They golden halls
Thy platinum walls
High Upper Darby Sweet.

Shall we forgate your teachers, fair?
You principal? No, Hardly!
Your janitors
A thousand scores?
No, Upper High Sweet Darby.

Be we cook or garbage man
Or cabbie, cop or trucker,
or pushing "T"
Or any three
My Darby Sweet High Upper.