My sister ran off with a junkie My mother ran off with a drunk My dog’s a two bit scaliwag leech and my old man’s a slimebucket skunk I’d make each one of them a mourner if April weren’t just around the corner Yeah you know I’d put a gun to my ear if the sacred season weren’t almost here... November through March is a long time in hell But then spring comes along to save us from our sins With bats back swinging and line drives zinging It’s the agony and ecstasy of losses and wins My baby left me for an unlicensed plumber the day after our pipes froze I swear to God I’d seek eternal slumber if it weren’t for those golden catches and throws... Hallelujah for Baseball and the Dimaggio streak For a win by Washington and every time the Rangers lose Hallelujah for the Say Hey Kid, the Big Six and the Freak For Ichiro’s arm and Zito’s charm nixing my fixing-to-die blues You might think you can vote with your card from the NRA And maybe they’ll give you a passport for being good with a gun But it’s sure you got no business living here in the USA if you won’t stand up and salute a walk-off home run Yeah, you got no business running around with Old Glory If you don’t worship at the church of the nine inning story Now I’m happy to have a beer and a couple belts of bourbon Hell, scratch the blood from its proceeds and I’d be OK with cocaine But for an opium of the people our old pastime’s prime cut Yeah, no drug or drink can do you like the national game So while Christians wait in vain for heaven to call them up we got Elysian fields right here leading to the Hall of Fame Yeah, they’re waiting for their Messiah to come clear the bases while we got rapture every year from spring to fall And you know their fishers of men could never hit our aces Dudes dabbling in martyrdom couldn’t touch a Koufax curveball Hallelujah for Baseball and the crack of the bat For Ozzie airborne and Tinker to Evers to Chance Hallelujah for all the Lous, Cy, Satchel and Nap for Campy and Clemente and the hotbox baseline dance Hallelujah for Whitman’s “place where memory gathers” for the rite on the diamond in the only church that matters

Oh your eyes are so blue, they could double as diamonds, cut a tango out of Turku and stand in for the sky But your heart is so cold, it could storm troop Karelia, put a plague on every house and a smile in every lie I forged you from magic metal, a molten stream made you flesh Composed you fresh from the earth, from silver, love and gold But your icy breath of sorrow has poisoned my tomorrow, shot my veins full of venom, and stilled me with cold Oh my heart is so blue, it could cry you a river, cry you a Kalevala, cry you this song And my fingers are so frozen they could snap like carrots, slap down the sun and make night all day long For your soul is so white, it could stand in for winter fill in for the snow and see the wheat through to spring Your sex is a stone and your blood will never sing I made my hell when I made you and gave you that ring Yes, I gave you life, metal maiden, but you will not be my missus so tearing the heart out of my chest now is my one and only wish But my hands have gone numb from the ice in your kisses so the sea will be my bride – I’ll lay me down with the fish

‘Twas someone pushing up daisies or kilned to dust ochre and sweet Someone long past rotten, a meal for maggots pushing peat ‘Twas a one-time eager breeder, a long-confirmed ex-breather Someone long past forgotten, in an urn or six feet deep who told me go to you, who made me take your hand It was dead souls singing and their wish was my command Standing there watching from the other side of the river – dead souls singing, telling me to be a birth-giver willing me into your arms to realize their vision pulling out all choral stops to cause a carnal collision They’ve been at it forever, a conspiracy from the far side and that’s what gave me the guts to risk a blow to my pride... Sure I love your green eyes and your frog-like fingers kill me Your smile is pure salvation when I feel I’m on the brink Your voice warms me like sun, your kisses always fill me and it feels like I’ve been looking for you as long as I could think But still... why did I dive in so deep and then want nothing but more? Sure you’re comely and smart, but I’d seen comely and smart before Why’d I jump off that ledge when I’d always veered clear of the edge? Why did I give you my all when I’d always been a tight-fisted bore? My great-great-grandmother made me do it, made me give my all That soul singing pulled my strings, that stiff was my downfall The wall around my heart couldn’t ward off her siren song The call of blood in my ears for me was much too strong Of course I love the way you walk and how you only fish with flies I love your flesh from toe to ear and the expanse between your eyes I love the dry martinis you make and the cigarettes you smoke but that can’t explain why I suddenly found myself going for broke Nope, that was my great-great-grandfather giving me a shove When he saw me rambling near the cliff, he saw I could still learn to love He knew his line would stop with me, if I didn’t get on the stick So he pushed me off and into your arms, into a love so big it’s sick Oh those bastards will stop at nothing in their old unholy quest When it comes to the life of their bloodline, the dead will never rest They’ll push and press and apply duress to get you to nest and mate They’ll sing that song till you go along and give in... give in and procreate

This land is our land, this land is not your land Fought for in Bastogne and the Solomon Islands Fought for at Shiloh and in buses to Birmingham This land needs you now to secede You went from slavery to Jim Crow segregation From John Birch lunacy to the Aryan Nations Now it’s your Tea Party, the new infestation Oh, this land needs you now to secede You could have yourself a real theocracy Purged of pagans and foreign philosophy Cleansed of elites and meritocracy Stripped of unions and socialist bureaucracy You could teach creationism in your new Confederacy Explain the Civil War as a fight for the rights of states Hang the Ten Commandments on every courthouse door And have Bible law to adjudicate your fates You’ll have a land that will not be made for me Unlike this land that now needs you to secede We’ll hang on to baseball, and you can have Monopoly We’ll go with science, and you’ll have your scriptures We’ll run on light, right and common decency And you’ll have your myths and superstitious strictures We’ll take The Constitution, and you’ll go with God Stuffing Him in a place where enlightenment don’t shine Called upon to execute His intelligent design You’ll love your land the way you never loved mine For this land was not made for you and me... And this land needs you now to secede In the land of a thousand private prisons and a million health insurance plans You’ll be free of regulations and environmental bans You’ll drill and dig up what you want and turn your rivers into swamps And no nanny state progressos will stop you building dams So secede now, please now, do it today! Save yourself from Babylon before you too turn gay You won’t realize God’s promise in this land if you stay And we can’t wait for the rapture to take you away And with your genetic pool, oh how you will thrive! You’ll be a sight to behold in but a few generations A knuckle-dragging, Bible-drooling, home-schooling tribe In a truncated, dissipated, Romper Room nation Assault-rifling woods reduced to rats, stumps and clutter You’ll be living on the gospel and imported peanut butter And in the brave new world you’ll have at your feet You can even stick a cross on the flag, so come on, take the leap! Get out of our union now and make your very own state We need you to take a bow for America to be great This land was not made for you, it’s not what you need And this land needs you now to secede

I won’t have money and I won’t stop, no I’ll keep on moving until I drop for my face is god-like beauty... let loose on the land of the free and with speed my spiritual duty... no one will ever know me I’ll stay alive as long as I drive, on the road, man, that’s where I thrive that’s where I run from who I am, a beautiful blur ever on the lam I’m hooked on speed and what I need is an epic land where the highways feed my eyes and my ears... and a bottomless hunger for grinding gears, my lies and my fears... there outing squares and scouting queers rolling out its long and spreading its wide and giving me the room I need to hide in the beat where I seek to reap what I sow in uprooted, fleet-footed frolic and flow... with the wind, hear it blow... me from Mudville to Missoula across the infinite ocean face of America, America my country ‘tis on thee my race ‘gainst the li’l yankee-québéquois – running from place to place to place, from ‘tit Jean-Louis le petit-bourgeois with a golden man pretty as a goddamn painting popping off at the wheel and a girl slash leech there faintly fainting or buzzed and copping a feel and whoosh! wham! and wow! goes the road, a snaking river wonder to behold a Mississippi move cutting a groove from Boise to Mobile Oh the road where I was ranger Dan, a shiftless Joe, a Navy man where I was a New York digger digging for who the hell I am until I threw in the towel and just cut and ran... and ran... and ran... from Lawrence to Loredo to Lala land, from Walla Walla to the Hoover Dam... and rode... and drove... and about me I still don’t know... and let it show that I gave up looking a long long time ago gave up looking to blow my cover and splash my real all over my other gave up looking and road the road, the road where I could roll... and roll... writing that roll rolling under the Underwood keys spewing out mass quantities, line after line of assorted me’s, black teeth biting into that paper to etch the words of my icon-maker – yeah I came to California with a typewriter on my knees All the way running from Lowell, Mass, and oh baby, what a gas! But that too had to pass when the bennies were gone and the booze went wrong and laughing it off made the gallery queasy and Neal ran off to drive for Ken Kesey and the road gets hard when the words don’t come, come so goddamn easy... And I vote Republican and talk up the road to another television sleazy awatching my face get bigger and bloated awondering whither my beauty floated – my beauty behind me like so much dust on a Sonora side road in the dusk rolling away from a pit stop riven, riven with want and lust – LUST for the road and LUST for sensation, LUST wolfing down every mile in the nation that’s the pill and that’s the elation, that’s the motion intoxication that comes from fuel in the machine, man we fly so high we have to scream, we roll and roll till we take flight into the star-spangled bang up black and blue... night The road sucking us dry, the reds sucking us white... till we’re there and gone like quicksilver, God... long gone outta sight.

I blew away my home and my sweet family I blew bars of blood and notes I’d never known Blew desire for that shefire shaking before me till the last drop of blood was sown Like a spear my horn cut from her head to her gut Kissed that girl with every lick I could play And when I got inside her, Lord, my horn ran amok and to God I could hear her say Let him blow, let his blood flow as one with a woman that’ll never leave me alone Let him blow, blow till kingdom come Till the King comes to carry him home Blinded by my blood, Lord, I saw the light of the music come to take me away But with my horn inside me now I’ll be all right for to God I can hear it pray Let him blow, let his blood flow as one with a horn that’ll never leave him alone Let him blow, blow till kingdom come Till the King comes to carry him home

My love’s kisses taste like salt Her heart pressed thin pumps tears My love’s lips are black and bursting Clouds spilling over with my love’s fears My love’s kisses taste like rain Rain running red with my love’s woe My love’s eyes are green with spleen Reaping what her kisses sow My love’s kisses taste of loss Taste of childhood, and taste of sleep My love’s kisses are hits and misses But when she hits, my love goes deep And my love sings like the rocks in her shoes Swamping all things in a landslide of blues My love swings like a swallow in a gale Up beating her wings, low to dodge the hail My love’s kisses taste like trees Old pine spires longing for hugs My love’s hands are baby honey bees And my love’s feet are no bigger than bugs Yes my love’s kisses taste like longing Taste like ashes in a Sibelian suite Yes my love’s kisses are hits and misses But when she hits, her love cuts deep Oh my love is an otter dissembling a tiger Take heed ye meaning to see or be inside her For her lips were made for slashing and her hips for gnashing And when my love gets blue she’ll gush like a geyser And my love sings like the rocks in her shoes Swamping all things in a landslide of blues My love swings like a swallow in a gale But I know she’ll cut through it in time... I know my love won’t fail

I thought I’d gone to the well, boys, one too many times Thought I’d run out of songs, thought I’d run out of lines I’d said me a mouthful, sang all that could be sung so after so much brayin’ I thought this donkey was done But then I stopped by the Snake Pit to have me a beer And what I seen in that bar, boys, shot me all full of fear Gave me new grounds for puttin’ pencil to paper and firin’one last round afore meetin’ my maker I saw a bunch of lazy losers gettin’ government stuff and terrorists let off with paid vacations I saw men losin’ jobs when they wasn’t colored enough and blacks still whinin’ about segregation I saw an uppity professor brainwashing our kids with global warming and the lie of evolution Now he’s goin’ after our guns and taxin’ all our takin’s like he never even heard of the American Revolution Then I heard a fair and balanced counter-attack fightin’ to taking our country back from the gang of marxist bureaucrats climbing atop of every institution I saw real Americans telling the truth and Republican patriots raising the roof The Bible in hand, boys, they were taking a stand and defending the Constitution... Now I got nothing ‘gainst democracy, but seein’ the new lay of the land of the free I had me a vision, boys, of old Germany and took a little look back at history You know Hitler got elected cause of economic woes and he socialized the country with big government controls and when he came up with death panels and a public option his big government voted for immediate adoption So I had to write this song... I’m Paul Revere with a guitar I’m writing to right the wrong... cause you can only push a good man so far And now Fox News is my muse I get my inspiration from her views Fox News is my muse She put me back in the saddle, led me into battle and showed me how to light the fuse They got Glen and Sean and one really hot blonde who can talk so good you almost forget about her legs They got O’Reilly and Palin givin’ hell to all the pagans tellin’ truth to the lame stream media fags You don’t need to know the names of the founding fathers to know those old fellas were good Christian men They founded us a damn good God-fearin’ country with the right to bear arms and talk American But to the home of the brave now bad times have come with the America-haters now running Washington And you don’t need no census or federal investigation to know we’re choking here on too much immigration Hell you don’t need nothin’ more than the good Book to know that making mother earth was just a six day job and anybody with a brain could tell you with one look that a man marrying a man just don’t sit well with God I saw it in that bar, lord, up on that screen: The president’s a racist who hates vanilla ice cream He’s a foreign-born progressive with a arab name yeah, all his basketball buddies probably call him Hussein He hides his radical agenda by making nice speeches While he pals around with terrorists and babies welfare leeches Bows to the unions and bends over for the ecologists Scorns old glory and kisses up to mosque apologists Fox News is my muse I get all my inspiration from her views Fox News is my muse She put me back in the saddle, so I could babble ‘bout something more than my lonesome cowboy blues And now Fox News is my muse I get all my inspiration from her views Fox News is my muse She put me back in the saddle, led me to the battle and said “come on baby, light my fuse".

(from the 13th edition of the IWW Songbook, 1917) “Such a lot of devils,” that’s what the papers say – “They’ve gone on strike for shorter hours and some increase in pay. They left the camps the lazy tramps, they all walked out as one. They say they’ll win the strike or put the bosses on the bum...” “Une telle bande de diables” c’est ce que dit la presse : “Ils font grève pour de meilleurs salaires et pour que le nombre d’heures baisse Ils ont quitté les puits, les flemmards unis, en bloc, ils ont tout arrêté Ils disent qu’ils gagneront la grève, quitte à mettre les patrons sur le pavé.”

(from the 9th edition of the IWW Songbook, 1916) Are you cold forlorn and hungry? Are there things you lack? Is your life made up of misery? Then dump the bosses off your back! Are your clothes all torn and tattered? Are you living in a shack? Would you have your troubles scattered? Then dump the bosses off your back! Are you almost split asunder? Loaded like a long-eared jack? Boob – why don’t you buck like thunder, And dump the bosses off your back? All the agonies you suffer You can end with one good whack – Stiffen up, you orn’ry duffer – And dump the bosses off your back... Tu t’écroules sous des malheurs Qui ne survivront pas à une bonne claque Lève-toi mon pauvre grogneur Et fourre le patron sous ta patte

adapted for song from poem of same name in Bars and Shadows – The Prison Poems of Ralph Chaplin (1926) Les soleils dorés de vos pères menaient Vers de vastes plaines vierges et claires – Savez-vous que l’Ouest est mort ? Et la liberté disparaît de la terre Maintenant de mornes cités se mettent à y pulluler Et la liberté meurt entre montagne et mer – Savez-vous que l’Ouest est mort ? Et la liberté disparaît de la terre De loin et de près, on a dompté et clôturé Le monde pour lequel se sont saignés vos pères – Savez-vous que l’Ouest est mort ? Et la liberté disparaît de la terre... What path is left for you to tread? When hunger-wolves are slinking near – Do you not know the West is dead? And freedom is not there nor here Your fathers, golden sunsets led To virgin prairies wide and clear – Do you not know the West is dead? And freedom is not there nor here Now dismal cities rise instead And freedom is not there nor here – What path is left for you to tread? Along the trails of yesteryear Your fathers' world, for which they bled, Is fenced and settled far and near – Do you not know the West is dead? And freedom is not there nor here – Your fathers gained a crust of bread, Their bones bleach on the lost frontier; What path is left for you to tread? Along the trails of yesteryear Do you not know the West is dead? And freedom is not there nor here

adapted for song from poem of same name in Bars and Shadows – The Prison Poems of Ralph Chaplin (1926) Once... long ago... do you remember how You placed a scroll above His bleeding brow You hailed Him king for soldiers to deride – And spat upon Him, scourged Him crucified? You murdered then just like you murder now A man who to you could not be made to bow You Christian soldier, Centralia centurion You Legion goon drunk on fear and odium... Wounded he faced you as he stood at bay You dared not lynch him in the light of day, But on your dungeon stones you let him bleed; Torn and defiant as a wind-lashed reed Night came . . . and you black vigilants of Greed . . . Without one qualm of horror at the deed Like human wolves, seized hard upon your prey, Tortured and killed . . . and, silent slunk away.