Surrounded By Pitchforks

Given

This all may simply be crazy
Pushbutton training and lazy
It may seem deferential and foolish
Until all your plans end up wasteful and useless

Don’t you all realize
Where you stand you’ll someday fertilize
You either lead or you’ll be driven
Blah blah blah… that’s just a given

Given, given, given, yeah
Given
Given, given, given
We all must face the times we live in
Given, given, given, yeah
Your life is just a given

You either move or you are moved on
Bulldozed over and improved upon
Technology always overtakes you
You better let your fate and its children forsake you

Given, given, given, yeah
Given
Given, given, given
We all must face the times we live in
Given, given, given, yeah
Your life is just a given

Smell the roses
But the thorns
Have a purpose
They adorn
Crowned and trampled
Underfoot
Left foresook
Misunderstood

Pushing forward ever forward
Beat the street and knife the cowards
There’s little left here to inherit
Little to do but grin and bare it

Stale shablee to toast a future
Bereft of love after its sutured
You either lead or you’ll be driven
Blah blah blah… that’s just a given

Given, given, given, yeah
Given
Given, given, given
We all must face the times we live in
Given, given, given, yeah
Your life is just a given

It’s just a given, yeah
It’s just a given, yeah
Yeah yeah, yeah
Your life is just a given

Breadcrumb Breakups

Where did we come in just now
When did the curtain fall
When did you take your bow
Was there an encore that kept you standing center stage?
It’s all the rage
Me in my cage

And then the mimes fall in
Annoying all the clowns
Who sit around
Smoking their muffled frowns
Who dares to say it wasn’t obviously expected?
If not detected
If not suspected

Until I find myself in
Another breadcrumb breakup
I somehow never see
Them trailing there behind me
Even when it’s obvious
To everyone around me
It’s another breadcrumb breakup
Exit strategy

Tell me, was the calculated grin
Something suggested by him and only him
I must have missed it once again, the flagrant foul
As the wise old owls
Just hoot and howl

Until I find myself in
Another breadcrumb breakup
I somehow never see
Them trailing there behind me
Even when it’s obvious
To everyone around me
It’s another breadcrumb breakup
Exit strategy

The telltell signs that William Tells deny
That I’m forever forever blinded by
Blindfolded but emboldened to
Forever be beholden to
My feelings at the moment
That a promise is unspoken to whom

Where did we come in just now
When did the curtain fall
When did you take your bow…

When did I find myself in
Another breadcrumb breakup
I somehow never see
Them trailing there behind me
Even when it’s obvious
To everyone around me
It’s another breadcrumb breakup
Exit strategy

Another breadcrumb breakup
Exit strategy
Another breadcrumb breakup
Exit strategy

Another Undercover Hangover

I wore sunglasses at midnight just to dodge the truth
‘Cos the truth was something else that I just couldn’t undo
So I stumbled through the alleys with my pockets full of doubts
Mixed in with the changes that had me fighting fruitless bouts

Spilling cheap secrets from a flask with no label
Deceiving myself and all the demons at my table
They raised up their glasses and laughed at my surprise
Guess I was fooling nobody with my angel disguise

There’s no living it down with an undercover hangover
Every memory’s a prank that I can’t quite get over
When you can’t count the endless dawns that find you wasted in a gutter
You’ll never fake it, you’ll never make it through another undercover hangover

All these scribbled notes on napkins just to bargain with the day
Detectives get selective when the puzzle’s skies are grey
So I shuffle all my stories like a crooked deck of cards
But the judge is never buying when I pull those false alarms

There’s no living it down with an undercover hangover
Every memory’s a prank that I can’t quite get over
When you can’t count the endless dawns that find you wasted in a gutter
You’ll never fake it, you’ll never make it through another undercover hangover

I sleep with undercover secrets
Secret whispers
Between lovers (secrets, secrets)
We pirouette through society’s debts
Debts all fraught with all my undercover regrets

I tap dance through the wreckage with a grin I can’t contain
But reality slaps it silly; upside down and ’round my brain
Now the streetlights flicker riddles that I never understand
Fiddling with my undercover necktie like a noose in my own hands

You’ll never fake it, never make it through another undercover hangover

All The Portraits

We’ve stopped having children, no reason to be blessed
Just to leave them homeless and restless amid all the unrest
We’ve mortgaged a future left to hope clenched in a fist
Trusting influencers gaming the mess the best

Too many friends on my bleak social feeds
Are dire and distraught and spent and diseased
To have worked a whole lifetime to facebook defeat
Into the bleak ether for algorithms to bleed

And they’re sitting for portraits
Surrounded by pitchforks
Not a hair out of place on their empty old heads
Properly proper
Dapperly dapper
All the portraits will burn when the sentence is read

The media circus where the clowns chase the bulls
Who’ve been dozing in the ballroom now that the china can choose (to run away with our spoons)
To take it or leave it or take it again
It doesn’t much matter what becomes of all the old men

Who are sitting for portraits
Surrounded by pitchforks
Not a hair out of place on their empty old heads
Properly proper
Dapperly dapper
All the portraits will burn when the sentence is read

Their cruelty’s folly
Must now somehow be
Exposed at every rally
And then effigy’d

To take it or leave it or take it again
It doesn’t much matter what becomes of all the old men
It’s now or it’s never to upheave and upend
This rickety contraption that holds us to them

While they’re sitting for portraits
Surrounded by pitchforks
Not a hair out of place on their empty old heads
Properly proper
Dapperly dapper
All the portraits will burn when the sentence is read (is read)

Lickity Split

I’m telling you something
If women know one thing
It’s how to baffle the rabble
With illogic well-travelled
‘Round pretzelized turns
Only witches may learn
And you and me, brother
Have no way to discern

It’s too complicated
However it’s stated
‘Cos before you know it
It’s all gonna go (lickity split)
Lickity split
It’s all gonna go lickity split
It’s all gonna go!

They’ll be running you over
Playin’ fetch and red rover
Makin’ rules as they’re goin’
Row row row your boat knowin’
Ain’t no merrily after
Too many bats in the rafters
No pickin’, no grinnin’
Over Jezebel’s laughter

I’m telling you something
If women know one thing
It’s how to baffle the rabble
With illogic well-travelled
Monday and Tuesday
Just two more no clues days
Get over yourself
No beggar’s be choosing [chorus]
It’s too complicated
However it’s stated
‘Cos before you know it
It’s all gonna go (lickity split)
Lickity split
It’s all gonna go lickity split
It’s all gonna go!

Enemy Affinities

Just when you think
It’s not us , it’s them
That’s when you least expect it
You’re blind to all the trends
You’re rolling back, but stationary
You click and clack, but quite contrary
What you cannot see is
The wolf is having Mary
And Moe loves Curly, despises Larry

Enemy affinities
That infiltrate communities
That play on all our biases
I wake up and beside me
I am sleeping with my enemy
His affinities inside of me
Enemy affinities
(ooooh…) Enemy affinities

I’m pretty sure about it
Undoubtedly I’m quietly assured
By the voices in my head
That go on talking, undeterred

Enemy affinities
That infiltrate communities
That play on all our biases
I wake up and beside me
I am sleeping with my enemy
His affinities inside of me
Enemy affinities
(ooooh…) Enemy affinities

Just when you think
It’s not us , it’s them
That’s when you get rejected
And suddenly your friends
Don’t pick up calls, only texts
They put up walls you don’t expect
What’s going on here is
What phantoms don’t reflect
And Bugs and Elmer never get

Enemy affinities
That infiltrate communities
That play on all our biases
I wake up and beside me
I am sleeping with my enemy
His affinities inside of me
Enemy affinities
(ooooh…) Enemy affinities

Dead Men Tell

And as I lay me down to sleep
I pray my soul
I pray my soul to keep
From harm and evil and accident
Like a restless flock of sheep
I bleat my incoherent thoughts
Like I’m talking to a bush
What is the meaning of the phrase
When does a shove become a push?

And dead men tell
Dead men tell
Dead men tell
No lies…

Distorted faces, funhouse disgraces
Like I’m walking with the damned
Yes, I am one among them
Clowns and elephants command
The brotherhood of man
Parallels and perpendicular demands
Crosshair lines in desert sands
I look down at my hands
What have they done
I do not comprehend
What they have done

And dead men tell
Dead men tell
Dead men tell
No lies…

We can’t forestall or scale the wall
We leave it all to fate
It’s just as well the gates of hell
The keeper contemplates
The pounding hammer’s fall
Deafening the call
But heaven hardly waits

And as I lay me down to sleep
I pray my soul (I pray my soul)
I pray my soul to keep
What’s been prepared for all of us
We do not know yet faith…
Will yet attempt the leap

And dead men tell
Dead men tell
Dead men tell
No lies…
And dead men tell
Dead men tell
Dead men tell
No lies…

That’s why we tell our truths disguised…
Dead men tell no lies

Exult The Exalted

Words can never say
What words try to convey
What’s inside of the outside of
The essence of olé

Wallah wallah wallah
No matter how much ahhh or ooohing
Won’t become its unbecoming
When what’s undone is our undoing

We exult in the inhale
Exalt as we exhale
In and out
Roundabout
Succeeding when we fail

At the bottom, find foundation
Build upon the trepidation
Everything is nothing
When we’re not feeling elation

We exult in the inhale
Exalt as we exhale
In and out
Roundabout
Succeeding when we fail

Breathe…
Stay calm and breathe
Breathe along with me
You and you and me
All together then
Altogether now
If not, when?

Words can never say
What words try to convey
What’s inside of the outside of
The essence of olé

It’s never what it seems
In the chaos of a dream
When we awaken with a scream
What does it really mean?

We exult in the inhale
Exalt as we exhale
In and out
Roundabout
Succeeding when we fail

In and out
(Roundabout)
In and out
(Roundabout)
In and out
(Roundabout)
In and out
(Roundabout)

Succeeding when we fail…

Don’t Pester The Devil

Don’t pester the devil into something
You’re definitely gonna regret
Don’t pester him into doing the one thing
You never counted on happening just yet

Don’t pester the devil when the rest of them tell you
They’re gonna get rewarded regardless
Don’t pester the devil ‘cos he’s more likely to fail you
Than the judge will dismiss all the charges

Don’t pester the devil
He is what he tells you
Don’t pester the devil
Be careful what compels you
Don’t pester the devil

Your friends will all bail when the inevitable fall
Quashes their plans for the party
As the devil’s bad angels come to him when he calls
It’s only then your scheme’s obviously faulty

Don’t pester the devil
He is what he tells you
Don’t pester the devil
Be careful what compels you
Don’t pester the devil

Yes, the devil’s cruel kismet
Will dispel your vain gambit
If you pester the festering wounds that you keep
Peeling back the old scars for new ones this week

Don’t pester the devil into something
You’re definitely gonna regret
And the regret will compound any interest
That heaven will ever forget

Don’t pester the devil
He is what he tells you
Don’t pester the devil
Be careful what compels you
Don’t pester the devil

Granddad Dug Coal

A Wyoming man bends his back
To the boss man’s will, to the black coal’s track
To Wyoming winds through Wyoming’s blight
That call his name,
“Come out and fight”

I ain’t afraid of snakes or heights
Or a redheaded woman on a sultry night
But you won’t catch me in that evil hole
It’ll take a man’s life
It’ll take a man’s soul

My granddad dug coal
My granddad dug coal
My granddad dug coal
My granddad dug coal

My father fought the country’s war
Freedom won but freedom’s whore
Was riding first class in his age’s train
That ran him down
Again and again

My granddad dug coal
My granddad dug coal
My granddad dug coal
My granddad dug coal

When that old canary sings its song
It won’t be long
It won’t be long

Me, I dig my own holes now
I dig and dig and dig somehow
It’s all the same to men in banks
And soon A.I . will say
“Hey, son… thanks”

My granddad dug coal
My granddad dug coal
My granddad dug coal
My granddad dug coal