At the Frozen Edge of the Solar System

“Rock musician Bruce Springsteen is 58 …"
“Birthdays,” The Houston Chronicle, Sept. 23, 2007

So hand me down my walkin’ cane
And my travelin’ shoes
And my Smith & Wesson .44
And my EZ tag sticker
And if it’s not too much trouble
could you reach over there and hand me down
that can of WD-40?
Stuff always comes in handy.

And, um, hate to keep botherin’ you but ah how about fetchin’ me
that box of Grape Nuts? The big one. Right there.
Thank you so much.

'Cause I woke up this morning
on Pluto, but found a local station playing
Astral Traveling (from Thembi, Pharaoh Sanders w/Lonnie Liston Smith, ABC-Impulse, 1971),
“A gentle rain on the African veldt.”
But here’s no veldt here,
just miles of rock and ice
and the occasional "no smoking" sign.
And parentheses inside brackets inside parentheses,
but no clear order of operations.

The deejay claims Pluto’s no longer a planet
but still takes 248 years to circle the sun.
Which is why I’m going back to bed.

So could you please put all that shit back where it belongs?

(Sorry.)