11.05.2020
51 SONGS FOR ? DAYS
You’re nobody ‘til everybody in this town thinks you’re a bastard.
Hiding from a scandal in the national press
They had been trying to get married since they stole the wedding dress
You may see them drowning as you stroll along the beach
But don’t throw out the lifeline till they’re clean out of reach
Must he be burdened by all that he’s taught to consider his own?
His skin and his station, his kin and his crown, his flag and his nation
They just weigh him down
Eyes going in and out of focus
Mild and bitter from tuberculosis
Forgotten man
Indifferent nation
They’re putting all your names
In the forbidden book
I know what they’re doing
But I don’t want to look
In time you can turn these obsessions into careers
While the parents of those kidnapped children
Start the bidding for their tears
Nonsense prevails, modesty fails
Grace and virtue turn into stupidity
While the calendar fades almost all barricades to a pale compromise
While our leaders have feasts on the backsides of beasts
They still think they’re the gods of antiquity
He thought he was the King of America
Where they pour Coca Cola just like vintage wine
Now I try hard not to become hysterical
But I’m not sure if I am laughing or crying
He said he heard about a couple living in the USA
He said they traded in their baby for a Chevrolet
Let’s talk about the future now we’ve put the past away
Say something once
Does it make a true?
To me
To you
And everyone you knew
So you look around the tiny room and you wonder where the hell you are
While the K.K.K. convention are all stranded in the bar
They wear hoods and carry shotguns in the main streets of Montgomery
But they’re helpless here as babies ’cause they’re only here on holiday.
They’re hunting us down here with Liberty’s light
A handshaking double-talking procession of the mighty
Pursued by a T.V. crew and coming after them
A limousine of singing stars and their brotherhood anthem
The former dictator was impeccably behaved
They’re mopping up all the stubborn ones who just refuse to be saved
No time for this kind of love
No flag waving high above
No sign for the dark place that I live
No God for the damn that I don’t give
The wine you drink has never seen a grape
And now your sci-fi suit has lost its shape
But its a dangerous game that comedy plays
Sometimes it tells you the truth, sometimes it delays it.
History repeats the old conceits
The glib replies the same defeats
Keep your finger on important issues
With crocodile tears and a pocketful of tissues.
Will you walk us uptown
Will you gather us near
As cowards flee
And traitors sneer
Keep a red flag flying
Keep a blue flag as well
And a white flag in case
It all goes to hell
So count your blessings when they ask permission
To govern with money and superstition
They tell you it’s all for your own protection
‘Til you fear your own reflection
But the times are passing from illumination
Like bodies falling from a constellation
An uncivil war divides the nation
All of your family had to kill to survive
And they’re still waiting for their big day to arrive
But if they knew how I felt, they’d bury me alive
Welcome to the working week
Why do you talk such stupid nonsense?
When my mind could rest much easier
Instead of all this dumb-dumb insolence
I would be happier with amnesia
They say stand up for justice
And where we drew the line
And you can do the killing
Because we don’t have the spine
Old woman living in a cardboard shoe
Lost so many souls, she don’t know what to do
So, say your prayers ‘cos down the stairs it’s 1932
Wise up ghost
Ever since the U.S. Mint was sucked dry and spat out, bookworms paid for rare tomes with wheelbarrows full of banknotes, some of them worthless Confederate money, stashes of which had been secreted in the plinths of various toppled statues.
They bartered with it on a Mississippi square with the irony of victors
None of it helped the healing.
I’ve got this imaginary radio, and I’m punching up the dial
I’ve got the A.C. trained on the T.V. so it won’t blow up in my eye
And everything that I thought fanciful and mocked as too extreme
Must be family entertainment here in the strange land of my dreams.
The Lord will judge us, with fire and thunder
As man continues with all his blunders
It’s only money
It’s only numbers
Maybe it is time to put aside these fictitious wonders
Man is feeble
Man is puny
And if it should divide the Union
There is no man who should own another
When he can’t even recognize his sister and his brother
Better send a begging letter to the big investigation
Who put these fingerprints on my imagination?
Endless balmy breezes and perfect sunsets framed
Vintage wine for breakfast
And naked starlets floating in Champagne
All the passions of your youth
Are tranquillized and tamed
You may think it looks familiar
Though you may know it by another name
This is Hell
In the darkest place
I`m lost
I have abandoned every hope
Siren is bending, the radio is humming,
Who do you love now and who are you damning?
The score is obscure and the melody fractured
The bird by my window refused to be captured
I hope I wake up in time
Life is a beautiful thing
P.S. Well by now you know the worst of it
And we’ve heard all the alibis that they’ve rehearsed
The smug predictions
If it’s not a contradiction
Keep faith in human nature
And have mercy on the creatures in this sad burlesque
Tears on your blackmail
Written to ransom
A point of the fingernail
Says that he’s so handsome
Next week there’ll be some fashionable new sin
For each harlot and each Puritan
Pull off their wings stick them on a pin
And just watch the money roll in
Torn from the pages of history
Repeated again and again and again
You’re either for or against us
And that is how the hatred begins
Tripwire
The sugar-coated pill is getting bitterer still
You think your country needs you but you know it never will
So pack up your troubles in a stolen handbag
Don’t dilly dally boys rally ’round the flag
Give us our daily bread, give us our daily bread, in individual slices, in individual slices
And something in the daily rag to cancel any crisis
Even presidents have newspaper lovers
Ministers go crawling under covers
She’s no angel
He’s no saint
They’re all covered up with white washed grease paint
And you say, the teacher never told you anything but white lies
But you never see the lies
And you believe
The party’s over
Time we broke up
It always seemed like a bad dream
One where I finally woke up
This magic moment concluding our mutual fate
But if you do have to leave me
Who will I have left to hate?
They’re draping stones with colours
And a roll of stolen names
Except those we never cared about
And those we need to blame
We’ll extinguish that flame, just the same
We are all cowards now
The twitching impulses to speak your mind
I’ll lend you my microscope and maybe you will find it
Is it in that ugly place that’s just behind your face?
The automatic gates close up between the shanties and the palace
The blowtorch amusements, the voodoo chalice
The pale pathetic promises that everybody swallows
And a teenage girl is cry ‘cos she don’t look like a million dollars
So help us if you can, ‘cos she don’t seem to have the attention span
I don’t spend my time perfecting the past
I live for the future
Because I know it won’t last
A bent note on a horn I can’t play
Ghosts in the window
That I can’t wish away
I catch you taking liberties and they do not impress me
Attach me to your credit card and then you can undress me
Everybody is on their knees, except the Russians and the Chinese
There’s a tuppenny-ha’penny millionaire
Looking for a fourpenny one
With a tight grip on the short hairs
Of the public imagination
So toll the bell or rock the cradle
Please don’t let me fear anything I cannot explain
I can’t believe, I’ll never believe in anything again
#50songsfor50days