- O all ye exorcizers come and exorcize now, and ye clergymen draw nigh
and clerge,
- For I wish to be purged of an urge.
- It is an irksome urge, compounded of nettles and glue,
- And it is turning all my friends back into acquaintances, and all my
acquaintances into people who look the other way when I heave into view.
- It is an indication that my mental buttery is butterless and my mental
larder lardless,
- And it consists not of "Stop me if you've heard this one," but of "I
know you've heard this one because I told it to you myself, but I'm going
to tell it to you again regardless,"
- Yes I fear I am living beyond my mental means.
- When I realize that it is not only anecdotes that I reiterate but what
is far worse, summaries of radio programs and descriptions of caroons in
newspapers and magazines.
- I want to resist but I cannot resist recounting the bright sayins of
celebrities that everybody already is familiar with every word of;
I want to refrain but cannot refrain from telling the same audience on two
successive evenings the same little snatches of domestic gossip about
people I used to know that they have never heard of.
- When I remember some titlating episode of my childhood I figure that
if it's worth narrating once it's worth narrating twice, in spite of
lackluster eyes and dropping jaws,
- And indeed I have now worked my way backward from titllating episodes
in my own childhood to titillating episodes in the childhood of my parents
or even my parents-in-laws,
- And what really turns my corpuscles to ice,
- I carry around clippings and read them to people twice.
- And I know what I am doing while I am doing it and I don't want to do
it but I can't help doing it and I am just another Ancient Mariner,
- And the prospects for my future social life couldn't possibly be
barrener.
- Did I tell you that the prospects for my future social life couldn't
be barrener?
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