The Great Lyrics Thread

Orpheus sat gloomy in his garden shed

Wondering what to do

With a lump of wood, a piece of wire

And a little pot of glue

O Mamma O Mamma

He sawed at the wood with half a heart

And glued it top to bottom

He strung a wire in between

He was feeling something rotten

O Mamma O Mamma

Orpheus looked at his instrument

And he gave the wire a pluck

He heard a sound so beautiful

He gasped and said O my God

O Mamma O Mamma

He rushed inside to tell his wife

He went racing down the halls

Eurydice was still asleep in bed

Like a sack of cannonballs

O Mamma O Mamma

Look what I've made, cried Orpheus

And he plucked a gentle note

Eurydice's eyes popped from their sockets

And her tongue burst through her throat

O Mamma O Mamma

O God, what have I done, he said

As her blood pooled in the sheets

But in his heart he felt a bliss

With which nothing could compete

O Mamma O Mamma

Orpheus went leaping through the fields

Strumming as hard as he did please

Birdies detonated in the sky

Bunnies dashed their brains out on the trees

O Mamma O Mamma

Orpheus strummed till his fingers bled

He hit a G minor 7

He woke up God from a deep, deep sleep

God was a major player in heaven

O Mamma O Mamma

God picked up a giant hammer

And He threw it with an thunderous yell

It smashed down hard on Orpheus' head

And knocked him down a well

O Mamma O Mamma

The well went down very deep

Very deep went down the well

The well went down so very deep

Well, the well went down to hell

O Mamma O Mamma

Poor Orpheus woke up with a start

All amongst the rotting dead

His lyre tacked safe under his arm

His brains all down his head

O Mamma O Mamma

Eurydice appeared brindled in blood

And she said to Orpheus

If you play that fucking thing down here

I'll stick it up your orifice!

O Mamma O Mamma

This lyre lark is for the birds, said Orpheus

It's enough to send you bats

Let's stay down here, Eurydice, dear

And we'll have a bunch of screaming brats

O Mamma O Mamma

Orpheus picked up his lyre for the last time

He was on a real low down bummer

And stared deep into the abyss and said

This one is for Mamma

O Mamma O Mamma

O Mamma O Mamma

Don't go into that barn, yea [2x]

Black cellophane sky at midnite

Big blue moon with three gold rings

I called Champion to the window

And I pointed up above the trees

That's where I heard my name in a scream

Coming from the woods, out there

I let my dog run off the chain

I locked my door real good with a chair

Don't go into that barn, yea [2x]

Everett Lee broke loose again

Its worse than the time before

Cause he's high on potato and tulip wine

Fermented in the muddy rain of course

A drunken wail a drunk train

Blew through the birdless trees

Oh, you're alone alright

Your alone alright

How did I know [2x]

Don't go into that barn, yea [2x]

An old black tree

Scratching up the sky

With boney, claw like fingers

A rusty black rake

Digging up the turnips

Of a muddy cold grey day

Shiny tooth talons

Coiled for grabbing a stranger

Happening by

And the day when home early

And the sun sank down into

The much of a deep dead sky

Don't go into that barn, yea [2x]

Bank since Saginaw Calinda was born

It's been cotton, soybeans, tobacco and corn

Behind the porticoed house of a

Long dead farm

They found the falling down timbers

Of a spooky old barn

Out there like a slave ship

Upside down

Wrecked beneath the waves of a rain

When the river is low

They find old bones and

When they plow they always

Dig up chains

Don't go into that barn, yea [2x]

Did you bury your fire?

Yes sir

Did you cover your tracks?

Yes sir

Did you bring your knife?

Yes sir

Did they see your face?

No sir

Did the Mom see you?

No sir

DId you go cross the river?

Yes sir

Did you fix your rake?

Yes sir

Did you stay down wind?

Yes sir

Did you hide your gun?

Yes sir

Did you smuggle your rum?

Yes sir

How did I know [3x]

Don't go into that barn, yea [2x]

Don't forget that I warned you

Don't go into that barn, yea [3x]

No shirt no coat

Put me on a flat boat

Dover, down to Covington

Covington to Louisville

Louisville to Henderson

Henderson to Smithland

Smithland to Memphis

Down to Vicksburg to

Natchez put me on a

Flat boat Dover Dam

To Covington, Covington to

Louisville, Louisville to

Henderson...

The imitation picks you up like a habit

Writing in the glow of the TV's static

Taking out the trash to the man

Give the people something they'd understand

A stick man flashing a fine-lined smile

Junk bond trader trying to sell a sucker a style

Rich man in a poor man's clothes

The permanent installment of the daily dose

And you tell off when you tell it like it is

Your world's no wider than your hatred of his

Checking into a small reality

Boring as a drug you take too regularly

The athlete's laugh, the broken crutch

The first true love that folded at the slightest touch

Brought down like an old hotel

People digging through rubble for things they can resell

Happy holidays, sad sick savior

The leaving lover that I still favor

I won't take your medicine,

I don't need a remedy

To be everything I'm supposed to be

I don't want nobody else

I can do it by myself

We're meant to be together

Now I'm a policeman directing traffic

Keeping everything moving, everything static

I'm a hitchhiker you'll recognize passing

On your way to some everlasting

Better sell it while you can

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,

you were talking so brave and so sweet,

giving me head on the unmade bed,

while the limousines wait in the street.

Those were the reasons and that was New York,

we were running for the money and the flesh.

And that was called love for the workers in song

probably still is for those of them left.

Ah but you got away, didn't you babe,

you just turned your back on the crowd,

you got away, I never once heard you say,

I need you, I don't need you,

I need you, I don't need you

and all of that jiving around.

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel

you were famous, your heart was a legend.

You told me again you preferred handsome men

but for me you would make an exception.

And clenching your fist for the ones like us

who are oppressed by the figures of beauty,

you fixed yourself, you said, "Well never mind,

we are ugly but we have the music."

And then you got away, didn't you babe...

I don't mean to suggest that I loved you the best,

I can't keep track of each fallen robin.

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,

that's all, I don't even think of you that often.

  Quote

and there was a booming above you

that night, black airplanes flew over the sea

and they were lowing and shifting like

beached whales

shelled snails

as you strained and you squinted to see

the retreat of their hairless and blind cavalry

 

you froze in your sand shoal

prayed for your poor soul

sky was a bread roll, soaking in a milk-bowl

and when the bread broke, fell in bricks of wet smoke

my sleeping heart woke, and my waking heart spoke

 

then there was a silence you took to mean something:

mean, run, sing

for alive you will evermore be

and the plague of the greasy black engines a-skulkin'

has gone east

while you're left to explain them to me

released from their hairless and blind cavalry

 

with your hands in your pockets, stubbily running

to where I'm unfresh, undressed and yawning

well, what is this craziness? this crazy talking?

you caught some small death when you were sleepwalking

 

it was a dark dream, darlin', it's over

the firebreather is beneath the clover

beneath his breathing there is cold clay, forever

a toothless hound-dog choking on a feather

 

but I took my fishingpole (fearing your fever)

down to the swimminghole, where there grows bitter herb

that blooms but one day a year by the riverside - I'd bring it here:

apply it gently

to the love you've lent me

 

while the river was twisting and braiding, the bait bobbed

and the string sobbed, as it cut through the hustling breeze

and I watched how the water was kneading so neatly

gone treacly

nearly slowed to a stop in this heat

- frenzy coiling flush along the muscles beneath

 

press on me: we are restless things

webs of seaweed are swaddling

you call upon the dusk

of the musk of a squid

shot full of ink, until you sink into your crib

 

rowing along, among the reeds, among the rushes

I heard your song, before my heart had time to hush it!

smell of a stone fruit being cut and being opened

smell of a low and of a lazy cinder smoking

 

and when the fire moves away

fire moves away, son

why would you say

I was the last one?

 

scrape your knee; it is only skin

makes the sound of violins

when you cut my hair, and leave the birds the trimmings

I am the happiest woman among all women

 

and the shallow

water

stretches as far as I can see

knee-deep, trudging along

a seagull weeps; "so long"

 

I'm humming a threshing song

until the night is over

hold on!

hold on!

hold your horses back from the fickle dawn

 

I have got some business out at the edge of town

candy weighing both of my pockets down

'til I can hardly stay afloat, from the weight of them

(and knowing how the common-folk condemn

what it is I do, to you, to keep you warm

being a woman, being a woman)

 

but always up the mountainside you're clambering

groping blindly, hungry for anything:

picking through your pocket linings - well, what is this?

scrap of sassafras, eh Sisyphus?

 

I see the blossoms broke and wet after the rain

little sister, he will be back again

I have washed a thousand spiders down the drain

spiders ghosts hang soaked and dangelin'

silently from all the blooming cherry trees

in tiny nooses, safe from everyone

- nothing but a nuisance; gone now, dead and done

be a woman, be a woman!

 

though we felt the spray of the waves

we decided to stay 'til the tide rose too far

we weren't afraid, 'cause we know what you are

and you know that we know what you are

 

awful atoll

- o, incalculable indiscreetness and sorrow!

bawl, bellow:

Sibyl sea-cow, all done up in a bow

 

toddle and roll;

teeth an impalpable bit of leather

while yarrow, heather and hollyhock

awkwardly molt along the shore

 

are you mine?

my heart?

mine anymore?

 

stay with me for awhile

that's an awfully real gun

I know life will lay you down

as the lightning has lately done

 

failing this, failing this,

follow me, my sweetest friend

to see what you anointed in pointing your gun there

 

lay it down! nice and slow!

there is nowhere to go, save up

up where the light, undiluted, is weaving in a drunk dream

at the sight of my baby, out back:

back on the patio watching the bats bring night in

- while, elsewhere, estuaries of wax-white

wend, endlessly, towards seashores unmapped

 

last week our picture window produced a half-word

heavy and hollow, hit by a brown bird

we stood and watched her gape like a rattlesnake

and pant and labour over every intake

 

I said a sort of prayer for some sort of rare grace

then thought I ought to take her to a higher place

said: "dog nor vulture nor cat shall toy with you

and though you die, bird, you will have a fine view"

 

then in my hot hand

she slumped her sick weight

we tramped through the poison oak

heartbroke and inchoate

 

the dogs were snapping

so you cuffed their collars

while I climbed the tree-house

then how I hollered!

cause she'd lain, as still as a stone, in my palm, for a lifetime or two

 

then, saw the treetops, cocked her head and up and flew

(while, back in the world that moves, often

according to the hoarding of these clues

dogs still run roughly around

little tufts of finch-down)

 

the cities we passed were a flickering wasteland

but his hand in my hand made them hale and harmless

while down in the lowlands the crops are all coming;

we have everything

life is thundering blissful towards death

in a stampede of his fumbling green gentleness

 

you stopped by, I was all alive

in my doorway, we shucked and jived

and when you wept, I was gone:

see, I got gone when I got wise

but I can't with certainty say we survived

 

then down, and down

and down, and down

and down, and deeper

stoke without sound

the blameless flames

you endless sleeper

 

through fire below, and fire above, and fire within

sleeped through the things that couldn't have been if you hadn't have been

 

and when the fire moves away

fire moves away, son

why would you say

I was the last one?

 

all my bones they are gone, gone, gone

take my bones, I don't need none

cold, cold cupboard, Lord, nothing to chew on!

suck all day on a cherry stone

 

dig a little hole, not three inches round

spit your pit in the hole in the ground

weep upon the spot for the starving of me!

till up grow a fine young cherry tree

 

well when the bough breaks, what'll you make for me?

a little willow cabin to rest on your knee

what'll I do with a trinket such as this?

think of your woman, who's gone to the west

 

but I'm starving and freezing in my measly old bed!

then I'll crawl across the salt flats to stroke your sweet head

come across the desert with no shoes on!

I love you truly, or I love no-one

 

fire

moves

away

 

fire moves away, son

why would you say

I was the last one?

 

clear the room! there's a fire, a fire, a fire

get going, and I'm going to be right behind you

and if the love of a woman or two, dear,

couldn't move you to such heights, then all I can do

 

is do, my darling, right by you