Pachinko

You're new around here.

Let's play the pachinko.

Have you seen the formations

rise up through the air?

Just look out the window

of this dirtbag saloon.

See nature's formations
rise up from the earth.

Now look the other way,

out past the pachinko,
just through the other window.

There. See those towers 

rise up through the air?

Remember those towers,

those pillars of light.

Look there tomorrow, 

those towers are gone.

But you're new around here.

Let's play the pachinko.

[[ Even I know only vaguely what this one is about. This is probably the framework for something larger. It's the opposition of nature and technology, or east and west, or indigenous and colonial, or Las Vegas and the desert, played out in a shitty bar set between the two. And there's a pachinko machine, which is something I have never actually seen. It is chance, fortune, noisy gaudy fate. The song and the universe are cleft in two by a pachinko machine. This could be anywhere two such forces clash. And the older, natural, indigenous force will win. According to the narrator. Don't worry, I'll come back and add rhymes and stuff to make it suitable for your weekly line dancing class. ]]

A Coin Toss

This 1943 Mercury dime

will circle our sun

to the end of our time

Ladies, a toast:

to the end of our time

...then I settled down

with a boy from a town,

a town crumbled into the sea...

there will never be another story

this is how all stories end

...that was the time

of the Mercury dime

round the far side of the sun...

there will never be another story

this is how all stories end

...out of the sun

came a man with a gun

whirling a circle of heat...

there will never be another story

this is how all stories end

...that was the day

that she melted away

fell off the edge of the world...

there will never be another story

this is how all stories end

This 1943 Mercury dime

will circle our sun

to the end of our time

Ladies, a toast:

to the end of our time

Circle the sun

to the end of our time

[[ It's intentionally disjointed. An astronaut has failed to settle something with a coin toss using an old shining silver Mercury dime that got away and is tumbling through space, glinting with each rotation. Well, that's part of the story. There is loss in the images, and a gunman. Three or four story lines hinted at. Only the images and emotions matter. ]]