A blameless, upright life, an unblemished conscience,

Plus the fact that clearly I’m not on anyone’s shit list,

Neither the Fed’s nor any of my neighbors’,

Bolsters me, Hanson,

More solidly than a Saturday Night Special;

Whether footslogging through Brooklyn at four AM

Or risking the gloom-filled catacombs of the subway,

Everything’s dandy.

For when catastrophe struck at Three Mile Island

I was miles away, singing about my Mabel,

Mating my rhymes, while even the liquid coolant

Turned radioactive.

Things were quite tense in eastern Pennsylvania:

Would the milk, the air, the bloodstreams all grow radiant,

Women give birth to prodigies, their husbands

Die prematurely?

You could set me anywhere-on a desert island

Without a TV set and no Man Friday,

Condemned to a steady diet of bark and berries

And frittered star-fish,

Or banish me to the freezing wastes of Sodus,

Where, by report, the men spit solid ice-cubes—

And you’ld find me engrossed in innocent, flowing numbers,

Measuring Mabel.