Egghead: Or, You Can't Survive on Ideas Alone

by Bo Burnham

I put a chameleon on a red dildo. He blushed.

How, may I ask, did you get so you, you beautiful true-to-you doer? I’ve met many today but can honestly say that I’ve never met anyone you-er.

If the poem you’re writing is silly and dumb, make sure that it rhymes at the end. Bum.

Eight baby turtles scurry to shore. Wait, seven—now six—now five—now four! Two more gone, two left in the race, both of them sprinting and hoping to place. The first gets second, the second gets third, and first place goes to the now well-fed bird.

Lou followed his dreams. Lou followed those things into studios and boxing rings, into clown schools and swimming pools, into plucking little fiddle strings. Lou followed his dreams. Now he’s dirt-poor. He doesn’t have a pillow or bed anymore. So three cheers for Lou, the follower who followed his dreams all the way to the floor!

When I die, I hope I don’t see a bright light. Those give me headaches. After a long life, I don’t want to stare into the sun. I want a calm blackness— the same shade that coats the back of my eyelids.

When I was little, I killed ants with a magnifying glass. And now I’m big. And I worry I’m doing the same thing with you.

;-;

Father Time is fucking Mother Nature. He’s fucking her good. And he’s lasting a long time. She’s loving the shit out of it. He’s doing that thing that makes girls’ heads spin. She’s been spinning for years! I heard that one day, in the future, he’s gonna fuck her right into the sun. He’s done it to chicks before.

I’ve seen a vampire transform into a single bat. I’ve seen a vampire transform into a number of bats. I’ve seen a vampire without any bat-transformation abilities. WHICH IS IT!?

Since both of us couldn’t have you, one of us had to halve you.

I need to make this hour last, so attach a beach to the top of my hourglass.

They say adults have no imagination. Not true. Just instead of dinosaurs and spaceships, they imagine silence and the new babysitter bent over the coffee table.

Senator, what bright eyes you have! The better to light paths with. Senator, what a sharp tongue you have! The better to cut the fat with. Senator, what broad shoulders you have! The better to carry you with. Wait, why is your chest beeping? God bless America!

Our Father Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, hollow be thy promises and shallow be thy shame.

She could light up a room with her smile. And she could really light one up with her flamethrower.

“Well, man, you know what they say.” No, I don’t. I don’t know what they say. I don’t even know who they are. Who is this they? They seem pretty smug. They seem to think they know shit. Fuck them.

I come from the Land of Really Fucked Thoughts, where babies are bound by umbilical knots, where dead horses pile on dandruff-stuffed cots, where burn-victim monkeys drink blood-and-pus shots. I come from the Land of That Just Ain’t Right, where young boys like fisting their hamsters at night, where boxers use AIDS-ridden needles to fight, where an Alzheimer’s orgy’s a regular sight. I don’t want to stay but I know I can’t leave it. I needed to tell you but please don’t reread it. I hope this sounds silly and you can’t conceive it, because you’re here the second you believe it.

I love you just the way you are but you don’t see you like I do. You shouldn’t try so hard to be perfect. Trust me, perfect should try to be you.

She waits regally, in perfect contrast to the drooling buffoon describing her.

keep hoping that someone will come home and cut me down but then I keep remembering that if I knew someone like that I wouldn’t be up here.

Are you terrified, as I am, of nothing? Nothing scares me more than nothing. “What’s going on?” I ask, trembling. Don’t you say it. Don’t you dare.

I want you to somehow survive a terrible car crash and then somehow not survive a small fender bender on the way back from the hospital.

I said no to drugs once. I looked a bag of weed right in the face and, like a loving but firm father, I said, “No.” I was really high.

Little Ashley hung magazine spreads on her wall, after picking the magazines out in the mall. Models and actresses, singers and more, with cleavage and makeup and glamour galore! All of her heroes were finally nearer. Her whole room looked perfect—except for the mirror.

So I can stop eating bacon or I can continue playing a quiet and aggressive role in the genocide of a species whose intelligence sits safely in the middle of my “worthy of real love” spectrum.

You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. And I know that. But I can’t rediscover it every fucking day. I can’t return to that epiphany every time my alarm clock goes off. It’s unnatural. But what I can do, and do quite naturally, is become jaded and unimpressed by it. I can see your beauty as normal, as one of my life’s many constants. I can climb atop its shoulders and travel about, rolling my eyes at sunsets and rainbows, dismissing all the beauty of the world as less than average. And I can complain to you about it. And you can deduce your beauty from that.

I don’t expect to change your mind with one conversation, only to chip away at it, like a woodpecker on a redwood tree.

Hey, look! It’s the Youth. The Youth is fighting the Man. How cute. Get him, Youth! Get him! Yikes, that was quick. You’ll get him next time!