get tough

 jesus won’t save our children      we have to fend for ourselves       we can’t rely on charity      or count on no-one else     in a world where petty tyrants      push everyone around     don’t let the bastards use you     don’t let them grind you down     it’s time to fight for justice       time to choose your ground       don’t hesitate to agitate      or sing out loud and proud      babylon can’t defeat us       we’ll burn the bastard down       

word pimps

 your coffee is getting old…

 

why don’t you drink it up while you carefully weigh your words     and strip them of feeling      before you press them into your album with them opposable thumbs of yours?    I’m crashing outta here      the night is getting young      and I’ve got fires to start.

 

your words are tired and cold…

 

you suck the life outta them      before committing them to dread asylums      where they are measured for straight jackets and confined to padded cells      never to be heard from again      me – I’m going down to Union Square to scream a lung out

 

this place is a cage…

 

café society is an aviary       where the featherless and loveless perch on the brink of boredom surveying an endless procession of days without names     they say repetition is reassuring     but I don’t like to take the same trip twice – that’s why I never read your stuff.

 

I’m flying this coop…

 

fare-thee-well my fair weather pals      you no longer rock my boat and though it’s been swell    I really think it’s time to split before we come to blows    remember that hippy who told us he’d rather die than fight?     well he did   somebody beat him to death last night     I think I made my point

 

I’m starting fires…

 

in this life I’ve been spiked    stabbed    shot and stamped on    so often it don’t hurt no more      I swallowed more poison and stopped more bullets than Rasputin       I lived to tell the tale and do I have tales to tell     but I didn’t learn them in here    I’m gonna torch this jail before I leave    but you can stay      feel free

coyotes

 I was just saying     I’m at an all time low      I need a new prescription     to lift me off the floor      everybody is on some level      where will I find you?      beyond all moral conventions?     striving to break free?    I have no social ambitions        does that make me a loner?      am I outside of society?    we all get a little lonely      we all need love sometime      where did you get yours?       where do I find mine?       like rivers flow into the ocean       to merge with the deep blue sea       there are things that only pass between      the likes of you and me      

beast

 once a radiant boy      light of my mother’s eyes     I am become a beast     and sparkle darkly now     I am become a beast       what once glowed with fire within       is drowned in blood and gore        old unhappy distant things    the battles of long ago     I am  become a beast     conflict is all I know

 

numbers

 I saw my numbers      etched on someone else’s wall     I don’t know what that means     I don’t suppose it matters       love is a foreign country      a stranger on the bus      it don’t come round here no more     it went out with the wind      and the trees     and my mother’s bones      it whispers soft      it whispers low       but it don’t remember my name       out here in the open      bleached by the summer sun       there’s no need for names        total exposure       the duality of nature    a biological exchange     who lives will see       it doesn’t matter any more