Blue-Tail Cry

When I was young, I use to date

A maiden fair from another state,

And pass the bottle ‘til she got high,

She’d gulp it down and then she’d cry:

            “Gimme a kiss an’ I don’t care,

            Gimme a kiss an’ I don’t care,

            Gimme a kiss an’ I don’t care,

            Ol’ morals gone away.”

One day we got lost upon a hill.

Trees so numerous, we were there ‘til

The sun went down, the moon got high.

In the dark, I heard her cry:

            “Gimme a hug an’ I don’t care,

            Gimme a hug an’ I don’t care,

            Gimme a hug an’ I don’t care,

            Ol’ morals gone away.”

The car it jump, it pitch,

It wouldn’t start by the switch.

It stopped and if you wonder why,

The reason was her hurried cry:

            “Gimme a pet an’ I don’t care,

            Gimme a pet an’ I don’t care,

            Gimme a pet an’ I don’t care,

            Ol’ morals gone away.”

We lay down under a simmon tree,

‘Neath the boughs, no one could see.

In the dark I heard her sign

Followed by her quiet cry:

            “Gimme your love an’ I don’t care,

            Gimme your love an’ I don’t care,

            Gimme your love an’ I don’t care,

            Ol’ morals gone away.”

We got married, it ain’t no joke.

She done left me, alone and broke.

How’d it happen, you wonder why?

All summed up in my loud cry:

            “Gave me a baby, boy do I care,

            Gave me a baby, boy I do care,

            Gave me a baby, boy I do care,

            Ol’ lady’s gone away.”

Illustration: clipping from an advertisement

Traditional folk tune

True Confessions of Bob Dylan

My guitar it means nothin’.

My voice , it means less.

If you hear the melody,

It’s a mighty good guess.

Still I shout it and sing it

And my records get buy’d,

And nobody notices

The flaws on my side.

My songs, they have meaning

And the meaning is deep.

But when I’s a-singin’,

You can’t grasp a peep.

Yet critics what hears it

Give satisfied sigh,

And they don’t notice

The flaws on my side.

Many dark hours,

I think about this:

Silence is golden,

Silence is bliss.

So you a-thinkin’

When I subside,

You don’t have to listen

To the flaws on my side.

My songs, they are wondrous.

You dig them the most.

But my singin’ is painful,

My accomp’ment is gross.

If you had three wishes

And could make a choice,

You’d see this Bob Dylan

Got a new voice.

based upon Bob Dylan's "With God on Our Side"

Seldom See Selma Anymore

O my Lord!

O my Lord!

Look at you people need.

An’ he look,

An he don’t

Like it, what he has see’d.

Seldom see Selma anymore.

All these folk

Lined up there

At the courthouse front door,

An’ the Lord,

He asked what

They all had done come for,

Seldom see Selma anymore.

We come to vote

To pray

To cry

To try

An’ we been hit

An’ bit

An’ tol’

To die.

Seldom see Selma anymore.

O pale one.

O pale one.

We are you brother here.

An’ they look

An’ they laugh.

We come to know great fear.

Seldom see Selma anymore.

Black human,

Keep movin’

In through the jailhouse door.

Let you eat

And try sleep

Down on the gritty floor.

Seldom see Selma anymore.

We come to vote

To pray

To cry

To try.

An’ we been hit

An’ bit

An’ tol’

To die.

Seldom see Selma anymore.

O my Lord.

O my Lord.

Look at you people need.

An’ he look

An’ he don’t

Like it, what he has see’d.

Seldom see Selma anymore.

But my men

Lie down in

The street an’ start to pray.

Don’t mind them,

The white men,

He has bought. He will pay.

Seldom see Selma anymore.

Nigger, they cried

an’ curse

an’ kick

an’ spit.

My Lord has seen

blood thirst

burst from

the pit.

Seldom see Selma anymore.

We black, that all.

it ain’t no curse.

It ain’t no sin.

Do you hear that roar?

The thunder what come

to sweep away our misery

and make bigots run

from the lightnin’ flash

that breaks the sky in fiery cracks?

It ain’t goin’ make no diff’rence

if you pale white or glossy black.

We’ll be allowed

to live

an’ breathe

an’ sweat.

We’ll be unbowed

to give

an’ lead

an’ get.

Seldom see Selma anymore.

Illustration: source unknown

Digit Age

We’re prisoners of society.

We are numbers on a page.

We haven’t got a name at all.

         You can call this the digit age.

Oh-six-one, three-two-six, four-six-nine,

Three-five-one-one...How they rage.

Oh-nine-five-three-two-nine-oh-two-seven,

         That’s my name in the digit age.

We’re enslaved to the email password

And wired to a cell phone cage.

We are base ten numbers, nameless

         And faceless in the digit age.

My Little One

Where have you gone, my little one?

Where have you gone, my modest son?

Once you were small, the most tiny gnome.

Now I peek around: Where have you gone?

Once your fingers were pickles,

and so were your toes.

You once had minute freckles

on the bridge of your nose.

But you kept growing out of your clothes.

A diaper, a shirt, some hose.

God, how you could grow.

Where did you go?

Time II

Speak of the good days

And all the good times

Quickly.

Time marches on.

Drink the fine vine.

Lift up your cup, be drunk!

The grape was a good year.

Drink long and deeply sample.

The grand year is nearly drank.

Reminisce good times

Over our good wines.

All the good times, if they were,

They are less dead.

The good times are memories

In the drinking of elder men,

As if they exist.

Exactly as if they were.

Illustration: Stock Photograph of grapes

Up

Up

The stair.

Top the top.

Lose our despair

Cooking together.

Close heat in the upstairs room.

Sweat like raindrops in a tempest.

Up.

Chimney

Blazing   fire.

Rake out

the flame

with me.

The log is consumed

And withered to ash.

Down

The stair we

Descend together.

Song in the Graveyard

Where have they gone, these men,

These

women?

Long ago born in love, in conceptions

Of

torture,

And now the grass grows bent upon

Their

graves,

Crushed by the unknowing.

Born to sadness --died in tears

Keeper of the Secrets

You are standing on the door to the secrets.

You have it tightly packed beneath your shoe.

Ah, but never mind.

No one is likely to struggle against that barrier to answer you.

There is the entire trouble with the thing:

It is only a few pressed feet of dirt that keep the answers in.

And though you may stand here and question,

Those who know keep the knowledge with them.

It is not fair? Well, I know that it is not.

Yet we shall have to wait and struggle along

Never knowing if the play we are in is happy or sad.

Listening closely to night for words in a ghostly song

To tell if the reaping

Brings living or sleeping.