Five-and-Dime

Verse 1:
Here comes the river,
taking a new way,
way she never took before.
Old mother river
looks in my window.
Old mother pounding at my door.

Chorus:
There's a reason
(there is a reason)
put that cemetery on a hill.
This river
(old mother river)
she will never have her fill.

Verse 2:
Here comes the next town,
tumbling down river,
one lost shoe at a time.
One empty beer can,
one bent umbrella,
then the whole whirling five-and-dime.

rain on the mountains

[[verse 1]]

I am come down from the mountains...

Mountains, rumble in my blood
I'll break the bank
in every town
along the way

I am the flood (I am the flood)
And I will wash
(And I will wash)
wash you all away

[[verse 2]]

I am come down from the heavens...

Rivers, gather in my heart
We'll break the back
of every doubt
we meet today

Before we tear this world apart
And I will wash
(And I will wash)
wash you all away


[[verse 3]]

I am the bolt from the blue...

I am the answer to no prayer
You will be struck
before your ears
can hear my thunder

I am plucked out of the air
To lift all boats
(To lift all boats)
or send them under

[[refrain]]

Do you know how far
this rain has fallen?
Do you know how far
this river has run?

Do you know this sun
will burn it all away?
Do you know this rain...
will come again?

[[fade]]

||: ||: rain on the mountains :|| x3
there's a flood coming down :|| xX

[[This one is Flood personified -- the "I" is the flood and storm and so on. It's secular gospel, with plenty of room left for a religious interpretation if that's what you wanted to do with it, though the religion in question could as easily be Zeus & Co.]]

I took a train

A1.
I took a train (she took a train)
because I could not stand a plane
(she took a train) I took a train
because I just refuse to use an automobile.

A2.
I took a train (she took a train)
the time and place, I am not sayin'
(she took a train) I took a train
I think I dreamed through Mississippi with Lucille.

A3.
I took a train (she took a train)
I do not think it has a name
(she took a train) I took a train
I cannot say this train is actually really real.

B1.
I took a train (she took a train)
To see America once again
To see America
eye to eye
one more day

C1.
There's no conductor on the train
No sacks of mail, just pouring rain
Washing the outside world away

C2.
How far we'll go, I could not say
This train is burning yesterday
This train is burning yesterday

B2.
Get a drink at the bar
And from the observation car
I see America
city by city
fade away

I see America
city by city [town by town, field by field, depending on how many times we've sung this thing]
fade away

etc.

[[

I hope the song works regardless of anything you know beforehand, but the plan is:

1. It's a train song, but a train on no real line. Lucille is and isn't B.B. King's guitar. This train got the disappeared railroad blues, which is why it's got no conductors or mail, and it's burning yesterday.

2. Maybe "he" or "she" makes little difference to the song (except for slight possible implications about Lucille), but it might be interesting to think of Gladys Knight (and the Pips singing "she...") in a duet with... Willie Nelson? Ha! Midnight Train to New Orleans. Or maybe this should be a Bonnie Raitt song.

2. The Pips are parenthetical (woo! woo!), as in https://genius.com/Gladys-knight-and-the-pips-midnight-train-to-georgia-lyrics  

This is not a script for a video, but if it were, imagine we picked up Willie and friends along the way, let him sing his piece (Cx) with or without Gladys as we take the train through middle America, drop him off, and then let Gladys and Co. have that drink (B2) as the train heads into the sunset and for the coast.

I don't know whether she's leaving America behind or America itself is fading away or both or whether it's all a simple bottle of nostalgia and silliness. If it was a video, they would be at the back of a train heading west, in an ornate observation car watching the setting sun shine on America before it heads over the Pacific... ]]

A Christmas Carol

[[ I suppose this is easier to look at as a poem than as a song, but it's a Christmas carol of sorts. In summer a water strider prefigures the birth of Christ. Maybe this is the birth of bug-eating John the Baptist. Then, a half year after, when water turns to stone, Mary the bursting girl says his name. ]]

In liquid summer,

surface tension:

a strider

bending light.  

A silver circle 

under sky:

fish dart at

beating wings.

Round the sun,

water to stone

transfigures

in the change.

At the cleaving

of the year, 

song is sung and

bell is rung

for universe

on either side:

for animal,

for spirit cloud.

Set to burst,

a girl sobs,

then says a name

in rising steam.

in our lonely bones

in our lonely bones

we believe in ghosts

we cannot believe

we were nothing before

we are only now

we are nothing after

we cannot take comfort

in that being true

in being that true

a spark in the infinite

nothing

we cannot accept

we are only sparrows

briefly warming ourselves

and then flung out of doors

we cannot believe

what we know to be true

in our bones

we believe our only ghosts

in our lonely bones

we believe in ghosts

two by two

[[ I hear this one played by a Big Band, but it could just as easily be a lone acoustic guitar or a piano, just as long as it's a happy dance number for couples. ]]


Chorus:
Two by two came the crocodiles
Two by two, the giraffes
Two by two, the hyenas,
who are always good for laughs.

Two by two ...
- with a snarl
- with a smile
- down the garden path
- down the aisle

Verse 1:
When Noah built the ark and stowed the crocodiles below
He knew he had a place where Mrs Noah wouldn't go
So down he went to smoke his pipe and play his harp at night
To crocodiles with miles of smiles in Noah's candlelight.

Bridge:
And Noah sang a song about the sunshine of his youth
Six hundred years before the rains came down
When he would stroll the countryside with Zipporah or Ruth
And later take her all the way to town

Chorus:
||: Two by two :||  etc.

Verse 2:
When Noah sang his song, he beat the rhythm on the rug,
And sixteen thousand animals, each goat and cat and bug,
Would pair up with its mate and start to dance the dance of life.
Then Noah went upstairs to do some dancing with his wife.

Bridge:
And Noah sang a song ...

Chorus:
||: Two by two :||  etc.

Verse 3:
Now when the rain stopped falling and the clouds began to pass,
The sea spread out for miles and miles, as smooth as any glass.
But that old ark kept rocking on the shiny, briny sea.
Where all us happy creatures danced the dance of eternity

Bridge:
And Noah sang a song ...

Chorus:
||: Two by two :||  etc.

cloverleaf blues

When the devil comes to meet you,

you will walk the edge of the road,

When the devil comes to meet you,

you will walk the edge of the road,

Walk backwards with your thumb out,

look forward to laying down your load.

When the devil comes to meet you,

you'll be walking away from grief,

When the devil comes to meet you,

you'll be walking away from grief,

He won't meet you at the crossroads;

you'll be lost on the clover leaf.

When you go to meet the devil,

you will both be half way home,

When you go to meet the devil,

you will both be half way home,

When he opens the door of his automobile,

keep your eye on the chrome.

[[

cloverleaf as opposed to the crossroads, of course -- this is modernized and more confusing, and the cross has been twisted

the devil drives a Hupmobile

the chrome is gaud and distraction and wealth and a mirror -- watch yourself.

]]

branches in my pathway

[[ I like a straight blues form. This one is literal and allegorical. A real storm, but also the difficulties and decisions in life, and we have an appearance by Bede's sparrow. ]]

verse 1:
I've got branches in my pathway
I've got the wind in my face
I've got branches in my pathway
I've got the wind in my face
Pull one star from the night sky
Leave a darkness in its place

verse 2:
Wind is whistling down the chimney
Wind is whistling down the stair
Wind is whistling down the chimney
Wind is whistling down the stair
Leave a door waiting open
For a thought too hard to bear

middle:
Fly in at one door, sparrow,
Fly out the other

verse 3:
I've got branches in my pathway
I've got my face in the blast
I've got branches in my pathway
I've got my face in the blast
Leaving no trail behind me
And the horizon's coming fast

an experiment come down in a field

[[ A fairly true story from my childhood, when the Bell test pilots used to fly the x-22 over our county -- I really watched it -- and they eventually crashed one in a field behind a school friend's house. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_X-22 ]]

Many years later,

I tracked down a name,

a man named McAllister,

who said we were friends.

I no longer remember 

the days that we spent.

An experiment

come down

in a field

Out behind houses.

This we remember.

No longer ourselves,

but this we remember

An experiment

come down

in a field

A Mustang pulled up

to the edge of a field

with a mother and child

and a wreck in the field,

fallen from the sky,

and the grass on fire.

News crews take it in

and honest to god

government men

watch us watching them

and the thing from the sky

we now draw for our children.

When we were children

we used to watch it

flying over corn fields

flying over cows

He said I'd been to his birthday

We were best friends that year

I have no recollection, 

of childhood anymore

tell me more, Mr McAllister,

tell me who I used to be.

submarine races

Don't wait up, dad.

Kerrie is gone

to the submarine races

and she won't be back

any time soon.

Running the battery

down with the radio.

Running the engine

to keep themselves warm.

Don't be angry, mom

they didn't mean to be out late.

Don't be angry, dad

they didn't mean to fall asleep,

fall asleep.

[[ This one is from life (and from death), about a 15-year-old girl from our school, our grade, who went parking with her boyfriend. They left the engine running and she died of carbon monoxide poisoning. I think he lived, somehow. ]]

popular mechanics

City of the future, 

fish bowled over, 

always warm weather.

Look where someone

takes a glider

from a hanger,

and rises on air

rises on a column of air

Look where someone

takes a sail boat

from a slip

and sails on a sea

sails on an inland sea

artificial thunder,

alternate Sundays,

designated storm days 

early in the morning

daring men and women

braving the elements

city of the future,

how will we fit here?

where will we sit here?

city of the future,

what is there for us?

no one will pay us

who will pay for

these engineered dreams?

[[ this is images of the future as seen in old magazines like Popular Mechanics and Popular Science, and then wondering how real people will fit into this future ]] 

what is it like?

what is it like

to be a bat?

ah.

is it how it is

to be a tiger?

the same surmise

comes into play

how it is to be 

always the question

it is how it is

to be how it is

[[ from the Thomas Nagel essay at first, but it drifts away ]]  

all bam boo

There were spiders in the tunnels,
there were phantoms in the air,
and the villages rose up
like they were made to burn.

( it was all
bam
boo

It was stone
on stone

It was us
and jungle

It was us
and alone )

We dropped out of the sky,
we kept the motor running,
we cut a hole in their world
and watched them all pour out.

( it was all
bam
boo... )

Women all came running
Holding children, burning,
We weren't afraid of dying
as much as going home.

( it was all
bam
boo... )

The world and his uncle
came with everything,
and we were all long gone,
but it followed us home.

( it was all
bam
boo... )

We were spiders in the tunnels,
We were phantoms in the air,
and the villagers rose up
like we were made to burn.

[[ This is a war song. Soldiers destroy a country and then the war follows them home one way or another. I started with Vietnam - Phantom jets and napalmed children -- but it could almost as easily be Iraq or any other asymmetric war of the last half century or so. ]]

the day the spacemen came to town

[[ Perhaps despite surface appearances, this one is actually about the black civil rights movement in America. And refugees. Yeah. ]]

the day the spacemen
came to town
we shot them down
we shot them down

and up they sprang
to walk again
straight into town
to settle down

[[I'm not fumbling for words here - this stanza is purposely left spare, floating. It needs pause, space, room to wonder in musically.  ]]
their hair was like...
electric...
crackling...
in our afternoon

their skin was of
an unknown
color shifting in
the sun, the moon,

they looked and walked
and talked from far, [sic -- just because ]
they made an
unexpected sound

like something
half suspected
we could never
get our tongues around

And, oh, but they
were beautiful
space men and women
every one,

but not like us:
we shot them down
we shot them down
we shot them down

we hid them in
our shallow earth
(God damn our souls,
God damn our birth)

but up they sprang
to walk again
across the bridge
and into town.

car going nowhere

At the side of the road,
alone at the wheel
of a car going nowhere.

Hands at ten and two,
don't move a muscle,
in a car going nowhere.

Let you bleed
at the wheel
of a car going nowhere.

A man in the lights,
spinning reds, spinning blues,
in the glare of the whites.

We see a silhouette,
the back of his head,
from a dashboard camera.

At the side of the road,
alone at the wheel
of a car going nowhere.

[[ a single image -- a man at the wheel of his car. he's been pulled over, the hint is that he's black, and if he twitches the wrong way the cops will kill him. Or maybe he is already dead. ]]

swallow the sea

forget the sky
you're on the side
of the ocean

pick up a shell
and hear the sighs [[ and "size" ]]
of the ocean

your lungs are full
of the surprise
of the ocean [[ gasping? or drowning? ]]

you're on the
far other side
of the ocean

you're on the
soft underside
of the ocean

from here the
sky is the size
of the ocean [[ here's the actual size, not sighs this time -- or maybe it is? ]]

[[ semi-silly semi-absurd series of stanzas that all mean something different but all end with "of the ocean". I think someone has drowned. ]]

bang on

Bang on metal

Loud as cannon

Sunday morning

Without warning

Bang on

Bang on

Jesus Christ

Rattling doors

Sunday morning

Without warning

Bang on

Bang on

I talk to strangers

-------------------

I talk to strangers

Climb into their cars

I like a movie

where nobody dies

a fading stain 

where a nobody died

a death presumed

but no body's found

--------

Now let's talk circling

crows, Antarctic crows

you know exactly 

what a man means

They turn a vortex 

in the middle of the air

Ezekiel is my secret 

is my secret name

-----------