Monkey's Paw
Copyright 1995, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
In a funny little building
In a boring satellite town
Three hundred little faces
Three hundred frightened frowns
Don't look them in the eye
It drives them over the edge
A sleepy day in suburbia
Humanity walks the ledge
Did you bend some rules
Did you break some laws
Fire a daring shot in the name of the cause
After the smoke clears
And frozen time begins to thaw
You'll know me by the sign of the monkey's paw
It's too late now to
Tally the score
The winners are too wealthy
The losers too poor
They're fighting in the headlines
They're fighting in the pews
Every bigot smugly sold on his own
Indefensible views
Roller skating nuns with black mustaches
The Faerie Queene dispensing consecration
Could censorship sometimes be appropriate
Beware gray areas of insinuation
All history's ruptured
Pulled free from the rivets
The revolution's in turmoil
The course reduced to divots
Were you dying to live
Or just living to die
What were you expecting to discover
Behind the sky
Did you bend some rules
Did you break some laws
Fire a daring shot in the name of the cause
After the smoke clears
And frozen time begins to thaw
You'll know me by the sign of the monkey's paw
The little folk are dying
Bleeding out, sneezing out the virus
You can see it in the curled fingers
And the paling of the iris
I think you'd better hear this, sir
Get the general on the phone
This looks like the big one, boys
Pack up your toys and run on home
Did we take it too fast
Did we take it too far
Did we cast all our fortunes
On a wish on a star
Maybe there's one great big soul
And human drama is just finesse
Don't we all know which way we ought to go
Can't we discriminate what's right from what's just business
Dis-Integrate
Copyright 1995, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
If the volume remains fixed
As the number of particles increases
The pressure either rises
Or the temperature decreases
(The former seems more likely)
You'll learn it in your physics classes
The law of ideal gasses
Phytoplankton are the sea's producers
Which the consumers devour in the flow and ebb
But no energy transfer is totally efficient
Which limits the expansion of the marine food web
You'll hear it in a biology lecture
Bioenergetics and ecosystem structure
Medical miracles and modern technology
Can extend life expectancy beyond a century
And pesticide chemistry and crop rotation
Will feed every nation on earth today
(At least the ones that can afford to pay)
You'll hear the song sung in every land
Unless you venture outside the USA, western Europe, or Japan
But when the last owl dies
When silt fouls the final fish's gills
You'll vacation near a panoramic strip mine vista
Sip carbonated beverages and pop syntho-protein pills
You'll taste it at the back of your tongue
Were your dividends sufficient when the corporations won?
Golden Apple
Copyright 1995, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Too many self-aggrandized fools are preaching
From too many unholy texts
Too much greed, too little heed
Paid to the intricacies of global connection
What violent considerations lurk
Behind gentle pale eyes
Then you raise the knife and smirk
And my strafers scratch the skies
It's brotherly competition
Tooth and nail for the corporate scrip
Boot prints trample old lines in the sand
Stars are starting to slip
Out of their celestial tracks
It's nighttime on the range
Dark cowboys armed with desperate intent
Appropriate the tactics of their long-hair foes
Computers stutter in wild schizophrenic
Files of random numbers
It's the end of history
Sweat starts from nervous pores
Descend into the bowels of your private terrors
And break down the concealed steel doors
Where the grim leviathan uneasily slumbers
We are dangerous life-forms
Machines of grace and genocide
Fly through fickle electric storms
What is this place we've come to ride in
Man with a rifle
Man with a gun
Man with a bulldozer
Listen to no one
Gonna open up an old road
Take it back by force
Like our founding fathers intended
Left arm sunburned of course
Innuendo whispered behind a hand
Hunched over at night with headphones on
Backward masking in a paisley band
Another movie with a digital time bomb
Fire leaps through the sharper minds
As clues accrue and link
At the origin of all things
Lies one fact: there is no escape
Too few administrators exercise vision
Too few stockholders allow it
This world's a golden apple ripe for the picking
Too many megalomaniacs all too eager to devour it
Little World
Copyright 1995, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Stirred my coffee this morning
At the rising of the sun
I stared down its receding hollows
Like the barrel of a shot gun
They sawed down the mountain
They plowed down my trees
One of these days I know they're
Coming for me
It's a little world
Full of big crime
Getting smaller all the time
Walking through the dirt streets
Living in a six-gun town
Nothing special happens much
No one famous hangs around
Another hateful drive-by
Another fatal knife attack
Another anonymous foreign prince
Ten swords thrust into his back
It's a little world
Dreaming of the big time
Getting smaller all the time
He studied the expression on the
American face
You must appreciate the difficulty
I can not provide for them
Why don't you?
I give them to you
Unfold the paper's razor creases
Terrorism politician poverty disease
Living on by idiot luck
Dying by degrees
Log on the psychic users group
Sure enough they told you so
Unbelievers feast on humble crow
Don't mean they can prevent it though
It's a little world
Technology reigns sublime
Getting smaller all the time
In the murky jungle musk and heat
Under the condensing sweat of clinging vine
Out of a sudden screech and feathery explosion
Down the receding vaults of stony time
Down the steaming corridors of receding time
Out where the continent meets the water
Two worlds crash and are torn asunder
The mother erodes against the daughter
The son and father annihilate each other
And the last black hole evaporates
Leaving the protons to decay
As the competition escalates
I watch the twilight fade to gray
It's a little world
Each new law more decadent
Getting smaller every second
It is death
No medicine
Perhaps I will wait to marry
Waiting for the cure to come
PDV-2
Copyright 1995, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Siberian skiff
Drift across the big lake
Shimmer blue in the crystal dawn
Quiet splash as the burden leaves the boat
For a moment floats
Then sinks slowly into
An alien universe
Vibrating atoms
Colliding in the big sky
Melting holes through thin atmospheric skin
Ultraviolet speeds our tans
Infrared warms our seas and lands
New hurricanes flush chemical fertilizer
Past continental margins
Mobile whirring plants
Dance in the tide replicating
Escalating pools of neurotoxin
Shed genetic time bombs
Viruses plasmids transposons bacteria
Dolphins beach with hot brain fever
Shake hands with the great deceiver
Won't you help me sister
Get them out alive
So descends the twister
What happened in '75
Unbearable stench
Surely the government's at fault
20,000 dead freshwater seals
But sled dog distemper's the culprit instead
Let the watery deep devour the dead
Microbes leap at the chance to
Burn through a naive host
Broken rivets
The airplane's in distress
Please fasten your seat belts
And swallow your antibiotics
And your antipsychotics
Civilization collapses in the wake of the plague
But plenty of cheap real estate enters the market
You'll find fierce turbulence ahead and
Bags in the seats before you
History Lesson
Copyright 1995, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
All comedy
All tragedy
Human history is nothing but the
Screams of genes
The Edges of Things
Copyright 1995, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
I was standing at the edge of a pale sea
I thought I'd like to feel its warm waters wash over me, yeah
Wash over me
I was floating like a metal kite pulled hard against the sky
I thought I'd like to break the nylon link and just fly, free
Who will fly with me
I was swapping stories with a certain kind of devil
The slip-point can liberate you if the playing field is level, yeah
Let's level the field
I was acting under orders, I was bound by law
But when the power failed you'd not believe what I saw, no
Eat the meat raw
I was standing at the edge of a great pale sea
I thought I'd like to feel its warm waters wash over me, yeah
Who wants to swim with me
Thin
Copyright 1995, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
That fiery old sun
Glowing in the dimming sky
Was roaring strong when I was born
It'll be roaring when I die
When I shed this skin and inscribe my final verse
Spread thinly across the universe
I see giraffes along the savanna
Unexpected birds burst up and scatter
The quick monkeys with dark eyes darting
Press teeth together then commence to chatter
When I've spent the final coin in my birthright purse
Spread thinly across the universe
Even now as silver planes take wing
Microwaves bounce off satellites and ricochet
The oxides of dinosaurs lay heavy over the city
We raise our glasses to progress and decay
As I prepare to take my leave
I can't help regretting this tarnished legacy
But I wish you luck, for neither victories nor losses
In the end are what you thought they'd be
But luck itself's not blessing or curse
Spread thinly across the universe
I am with you always
No matter what you do
In the fields and the hallways
The oceans and each tear of dew
Wherever you may go
Whomever you may know
Through your joys and hard-earned sorrows
All your back pages and tomorrows
I'm in the water
I'm in the air
I'm drifting through your skies
I'm everywhere
I'm the man in the moon
I'm the blacksmith in the sun
And when you meet your perfect stranger, remember
I'm everyone
And I am every place
And I am every time
I am every moral dilemma
I am every crime
You'll find me waiting in your thoughts
And I'm hiding in your breath
I participated in your birth
I'll be witness to your death
And when your own husk at last breaks down
And you feel your spirit start to disperse
Then we'll meet again, you and I
Spread thinly across the universe
Binnory
Copyright 1996, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
The tale of two daughters of a king I'll sing
In the high lands of Binnory.
Sir William won the eldest's love
And plighted his troth to her with ring.
But when he beheld the younger sister fair
With rosy cheeks and golden hair
He cared no longer for the elder
In the high lands of Binnory.
The elder princess came to hate the younger
In the high lands of Binnory.
Said she: "Come, let's see the boats come home
From their voyages upon the lonesome sea."
Hand in hand to the river's bank they came.
Then, catching her sister by her golden mane,
She threw the younger into the streams that drain
The high lands of Binnory.
"Dear sister, extend your hand to me,"
Cried the younger daughter of the king of Binnory,
"And all I have I'll give to thee
Between the mountains and the sea."
"I'll not extend my hand to thee,"
Replied the elder in her iniquity,
"For I'll inherit all, you see,
And handsome Sir William will return to me."
A famous harper found her there
Upon the river banks of Binnory.
He strung his harp with the golden hair
Of the unknown waif drowned in regal finery.
Long years he traveled and played that harp
Whose voice lilted sweet just like a lark
Until by chance he came one evening dark
To the castle of the king of Binnory.
The court were gathered to hear him sing
In the high lands of Binnory.
Sir William and his princess, and the king and queen,
All applauded the artistry of his minstreling.
But when the harper lay his harp aside
The harp sang on, no human hand applied
To its golden strings, and their eyes stared wide
In the high lands of Binnory.
"There sit my parents, the king and queen
Of these fine lands of Binnory.
And there, Sir William, immaculate, clean,
Whose heart proved treacherous and mean.
And there, the harper, whose fine harp bound me:
He it was who finally found me
After you, my sister, so cruelly drowned me
In the cold, cold waters of Binnory."
No comments:
Post a Comment