The Gilmores

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

American Elegance

Ulysses S. Grant told his doctor
Fact is I think I'm a verb
A verb is anything that signifies to be
To do, to suffer
Fact is, I signify all three

Allen Iverson is a verb meaning
To get from here to there
Like that!  (The way he did it)
Your game is what you are

Sister Edward Mary played the autoharp for us
Though not like Kilby Snow
But even so, even so

I was never afraid of anything living
Was what the gunslinger told me
Except for ghosts
And now I've outlived that

The pure products of America go crazy
Wrote the kindly physician
But, Josie, I'm still feeling pretty good
For an old man in my condition

Got to find some peace and quiet
I've been listening to John Cage
There is the real American elegance
Said Pablo Picasso while gazing upon Honest Abe

Torturetown

I raised them with the tears of my eyes
Look how these devils came and took them
They were just gone, overnight


These are tales told, verbatim, in Torturetown
Torturetown, Torturetown
These are tales told in Torturetown


Many people were tortured more than me
I just wanted to save my soul
I wonder why they did it


These are tales told, verbatim, in Torturetown
Torturetown, Torturetown
These are tales told in Torturetown

Why does one human being
Want to break the soul of another?
My son accepts his destiny
   as something already written


These are tales told, verbatim, 
   in Torturetown
Torturetown, Torturetown
These are tales told 
   in Torturetown






Well might you ask
Where is this Torturetown?
Well might you ask
Where can it be found?
Well might you ask
Where is this Torturetown
Well might you ask
Where can it be found?
Not all that far away from here
Somewhere right close around
Somewhere where your flight touches down

I don't know who that is
I don't know who that is
I told you I don't know who that is
I don't know who that is
I don't know who that is
I told you, I don't know who that is


Interrogation
Elimination
Termination
Liquidation
Salvage


Interrogation
Elimination
Termination
Liquidation
Salvage

Reason

To look at anything straight
With any degree of honesty
Is to be mad
Divorced of context
Nothing can withstand such scrutiny

Consider: The incivility of mirrors
The angularity of time
The power of snow
The justice of loneliness
The insularity of caution
The risk of daylight
The tenure of confidence
The intricacy of breath
The honor of mendacity





There are times I rage, times I tremble
Sometimes it's time to go up on the bridge and blow your horn
I couldn't shoot down a mad dog in the middle of the street

Patti

Dance the dance

Trance the trance

Trance the dance

Dance the trance

Host the host

Ghost the ghost

Ghost the host

Host the ghost

Play the play

Gray the gray

Gray the play

Play the gray

Time the time

Rhyme the rhyme

Time the rhyme

Rhyme the time

Eye the eye

Why the why

I the I

Eye the why

Why the I

I the why

I the eye

Why the eye

Eye the I

Overcome

        Come over

Pittsburgh, Schizophrenia

For every mill, a flower

And for me

The End of Days

Guys named Bud who work for
   the town
Volunteer firefighters in SUVs
Hey Shorty, name that tune for the
   month of June
DMX has been spotted in Applebees


The sirens are crying and the cops
   are flying
They're all going different ways
Sinatra lost her to the summer wind
We all get a little desperate at the
    end of days


They're all real big and most of it's muscle
Their caps are on backwards but their heads are on straight
They look a little like Buddhas but not so serene
One for my baby, one for the road, one just because it's getting late


The sirens are crying and the cops are flying
They're all going different ways
The piano man says only the good die young
We all get a little desperate at the end of days

The bartender's kind of heavy but
     she's real sweet
The waitresses are all like family
The guys are too old and the girls
     are too young
Nothing's as pretty as what's
    on the TV






The sirens are crying and the cops are flying
They're all going different ways
Twenty, twenty-four hours to go, I need
    to be sedated
We all get a little desperate at the end of days

The Yankees won, the Mets lost
This Sunday is said to be the Pentecost
Everyone in here is already speaking in tongues
They don't understand though it's all the same one


The sirens are crying and the cops are flying
They're all going different ways
Can't you see, can't you see, what that woman
    been doing to me?
We all get a little desperate at the end of days

The swimming coach pours a shot of Bacardi
    into his Corona
He turns the bottle upside down and covers it
    with his thumb
God bless the McGuckins and the girl halfway
    down with the long dark hair
Who tells her phone, I don't know, he got kind
    of weird when I asked if I could come

The sirens are crying and the cops
    are flying
They're all going different ways
Get up, stand up, stand up for
    your rights
We all get a little desperate at the
    end of days


Coyotes on the firehouse lawn
Clouds of bats returning home
Crows up on the telephone wire
Taunting me for being so alone


The sirens are crying and the cops are flying
They're all going different ways
Lord I was born a ramblin' man
We all get a little desperate at the end of days

Runner

Last night I slept in a doorway
The rain was soft and fair
The utilities were digging up the street
But none of them saw me there


Cause I was like a Tarahumara
Like a Tarahumara
Like an Indian
Like an Indian
Like a ghost in the canyon where
    the conquistadores
Have never even been
Like a Tarahumara
Like a Tarahumara
Like an Indian
Like an Indian


Then one of them noticed me
And they all got kind of nervous
Don't know if it was cause I was still here
Or because I had no need for the service


Cause I was like a Tarahumara
Like a Tarahumara
Like an Indian
Like an Indian
Drifting like a cloud across the mountainside
With the wildfire still blazing
Like a Tarahumara
Like a Tarahumara
Like an Indian
Like an Indian


Well even if they whistle you for a false start
Just keep going, don't look back
Just so long as your path has heart
The perfect runner leaves no track
After many, many hundreds of miles
I overtook myself at last
I made pretty good time overall
On my journey through the past


Like a Tarahumara
Like a Tarahumara
Like an Indian
Like an Indian
Like a spirit already long since finished
Before his race was even run
Like a Tarahumara
Lke a Tarahumara
Like an Indian
Like an Indian
Like a coyote in the shadow of the wilderness
At the setting of the sun
Like a runner . . . 
Like a runner . . .


Like a runner . . . fading away
Like a runner . . . fading away
Like a runner . . . fading away

Fairy Tale

So many words
Don't mean it's all just talk
Don't you know with others I'm quiet?
And for so long there was only silence
Exile and running and violence
Within death ran riot
Put your hand in mine and come for a walk
Let us listen to the songs of the birds
We could be great together in our
    time, Charlene


Have you not yet figured it out?
Do you not know who I am?
I am the prince
And you are the girl
And were we at last to kiss
We might set fire to this world

I must go among them in disguise   
So that they may speak the more freely
And I escape all notice
Though for the kiss of recognition I yearn
Then lionhearted and sure will I return
To dispel the lies that were told us
About heresy and gold and opportunity
Strike a blow against fortune and men's eyes
And win the hand of the fair Charlene 


Have you not yet figured it out?
Do you not know who I am?
I am the prince
And you are the girl
And were we at last to kiss
We might set fire to this world

When I sipped from the chalice
She cried
I never sipped from the chalice
I lied
But I kept on searching
And I didn't die 


The thought of you starts my heart to dance
I wish you could see the way you look in my eye
Election is the conceit of the learned
History is the conceit of nations
I went unseen at all of their stations
And there was no mercy in the offerings they burned
Stand with me amidst all their pleas and cries
Make fate our own and love our circumstance
Two together is the greatest force, Charlene

Have you not yet figured it out?
Do you not know who I am?
I am the prince
And you are the girl
And were we at last to kiss
We might set fire to this world


Mistake not in my cloak of rags
For my soul does not rove in tatters
And as a king I am with thee
In these and country matters
A world for you I would procure
And with my lines proclaim
Invite you where no other has stepped
With you share the same
For these things I make are not less than real
Even greater for the claim
Won't you walk out with me tonight, Charlene
In the soft midnight rain?

Have you not yet figured it out?
Do you not know who I am?
I am the prince
And you are the girl
And were we at last to kiss
We might set fire to this world

Seven Muddy Horses

The first time I saw them in a dream
Loping through a mountain pass
The next time I saw them was in town
Coming cross the river bridge
Running fast
Seven muddy horses


On one sat a rider
His face a mask, of grim countenance
     and death
Red roses where his eyes had been
And no one rode the rest
Seven muddy horses


The next time I saw them
Was on the burying ground
Standing in a herd at a respectful distance
With their heads bowed down
Seven muddy horses


John Brown rode a cock horse
Jesus rode a mule
One of them was a savior
The other a madman and a fool
I'm not afraid of dying, especially out of doors
But I'm not going to any more funerals, especially yours
Sometimes late at night when the candles are burning
And there's no one else around
That's when I hear the sound
Seven muddy horses
Seven muddy horses
Seven muddy horses
Going down 

Heterochromia (Mengele's Dogs)

Now he is an old man
For demons never age
On a bench in the sun
In a place too warm to be home
Playing fetch with the strays
The way others toss kernels and crusts
To the pigeons and swans

They come to him when he calls
With happy tails and shrill yelps and eager
As free as gypsies and no better fed
And he pats them and feeds them and is
    withal so kind
In his old man's soul and panama hat
That only a hard heart could fail to be moved by it

Each day he comes
For each one of them he has
   a name
Some affectionate diminutive
Though none of them will ever
    amount to anything
Even their sexual indiscrimination
    pleases him
Though as refutation or proof no
    one can say

When they are sick or hurt he
    treats them
With tinctures and salves he prepares
    at home
And carries in a black physicians' bag
For the mange maybe
Or their various bites and scrapes
And always a little special something
For the bitches
When they are pregnant

How do you know it is him?
How can you be sure?
How can you be sure it is not?
Is  that all there is?
Is it more frightening like this, or less?
Which way do you see him?
It depends which eye you
     look out from
What strange permutations and infinity
    of combinations there are