I've been a fan of DMB since the first time I saw them play. It's hard to forget it; the show was in Oklahoma City, just a week after the Murrah bombing in 1995, and the atmosphere was oddly communal and emotional due to all our shared experiences of the recent days.

For some reason, this morning I decided to google the lyrics to "Typical Situation", which had popped up on my ipod on my way to work. I discovered that the song was inspired by the poem "A Prayer in the Pentagon", by Robert Dederick.

A Prayer in the Pentagon

Nine planets, Sir, endlessly circle, Sir, one yellow star among Sir’s galaxies: Pluto Neptune Venus Jupiter Saturn Uranus Mercury Mars and this- this watered and this aired this favored one where all that crawl and swim and fly and run that drove and swarm and herd and flock are in with tooth and leg and lung and claw and fin created clothed and colored are by Sir

Eight colors (counting white) Sir’s rainbow makes when whiteness on Sir’s broken waters breaks arched over tidal blue and branching gray and grazing green and foaling brown down and away with gorsing yellow glow and honeyed hay and petalled blush and mottled winging whir; the limpid eyes each of Sir’s colors wakes dark-irised are and cleared and curved by Sir

Seven tossing seas Sir’s pent-up lands divide where silver shoals in aching green-ness glide turn suddenly and dart and flatly lie break surface plunge and from each other hide and stare as though by staring they aver what sweet surprise had widened each wide eye that once looked early on creating Sir

Six senses there were then in us who were salt-tasting all along the salt-scented shore who felt crust cool and looked on shrinking sea and heard gull-cry on draining estuary and found back of these five a something more a sense of self and back of self—Sir

Five fingers though (counting a thumb) were what we mostly were aware of as we fought Sir’s elements and cleared Sir’s forests and sought creation-wise new metalled ways to go by spinning wheel and wing off runway. So?

Four quarters of our world began to grow too few and of Sir’s yellow star we thought equations scribbled bubbled in retort distilled its hot explosive secrets. So?

Three questions pose themselves now as we wait: did Sir not know how to end what Sir began? Or could we choose? Or did Sir always plan?

Two hands of ours to bring us soon or late bent to destroy what the hands of Sir had wrought

One day when we and all our world are brought to Nought?