AN AMERICAN PRAYER -

Awake Ghost Song

Is everybody in?

             Is everybody in?

                          Is everybody in?

                                          The ceremony is about to begin.

                                          WAKE UP!

                                          You can't remember where it was

                                          had this dream stopped?

Awake

Shake dreams from your hair
My pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
The day's divinity
First thing you see.

A vast radiant beach in a cool jeweled moon
Couples naked race down by it's quiet side
And we laugh like soft, mad children
Smug in the wooly cotton brains of infancy
The music and voices are all around us.
Choose they croon the Ancient Ones
The time has come again
Choose now, they croon
Beneath the moon
Beside an ancient lake
Enter again the sweet forest
Enter the hot dream
Come with us
Everything is broken up and dances.

Dawn's Highway

Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding
Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind.

Me and my -ah- mother and father - and a
grandmother and a grandfather - were driving through
the desert, at dawn, and a truck load of Indian
workers had either hit another car, or just - I don't
know what happened - but there were Indians scattered
all over the highway, bleeding to death.

So the car pulls up and stops. That was the first time
I tasted fear. I musta' been about four - like a child is
like a flower, his head is just floating in the
breeze, man.
The reaction I get now thinking about it, looking
back - is that the souls of the ghosts of those dead
Indians...maybe one or two of 'em...were just
running around freaking out, and just leaped into my
soul. And they're still in there.

Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding
Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind.

Blood in the streets in the town of New Haven
Blood stains the roofs and the palm trees of Venice
Blood in my love in the terrible summer
Bloody red sun of Phantastic L.A.

Blood screams her brain as they chop off her fingers
Blood will be born in the birth if a nation
Blood is the rose of mysterious union
Blood on the rise, it's following me.

Indian, Indian what did you die for?
Indian says, nothing at all.

Newborn Awakening

gently they stir, gently rise
The dead are newborn awakening
With ravaged limbs and wet souls
Gently they sigh in rapt funeral amazement
Who called these dead to dance?
Was it the young woman learning to play the ghost song on her baby grand?
Was it the wilderness children?
Was it the ghost god himself, stuttering, cheering, chatting blindly?
I called you up to anoint the earth
I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well
To glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray

To Come of Age

A military station in the desert.

Can we resolve the past
Lurking jaws, joints of time?
The Base
To come of age in a dry place
Holes and caves.

My friend drove and hour each day from the mountains
The bus gives you a hard-on with books in your lap
Someone shot the bird in the afternoon dance show
They gave out free records to the best couple
Spades dance best, from the hip.

Black Polished Chrome (Latino Chrome.)

The music was new
black polished chrome
And came over the summer
like liquid night.
The DJ's took pills to stay awake
and play for seven days
They went to the studio
And someone knew him
Someone knew the TV showman
He came to our homeroom party
and played records
And when he left in the hot noon sun
and walked to his car
We saw the chooks had written
F-U-C-K on his windshield
He wiped it off with a rag
and smiling coolly drove away
He's rich. Got a big car.

My gang will get you
Scenes of rape in the arroyo
Seduction in cars, abandoned buildings
Fights at the food stand
The dust
the shoes
Open shirts and raised collars
Bright sculptured hair.

Hey man, you want girls, pills, grass? C'mon...
I show you good time.
This place has everything. C'mon...
I show you.

Angels and Sailors

Angels and sailors
rich girls
backyard fences
tents

Dreams watching each other narrowly
soft luxuriant cars
Girls in garages, stripped
out to get liquor and clothes
half gallons of wine and six-packs of beer
Jumped, humped, born to suffer
made to undress in the wilderness.

I will never treat you mean
Never start no kind of scene
I'll tell you every place and person that I've been.

Always a playground instructor, never a killer
Always a bridesmaid on the verge of fame or over
He maneuvered two girls into his hotel room
One a friend, the other, the young one, a newer stranger
Vaguely Mexican or Puerto Rican
Poor boys thighs and buttock scarred by a father's belt
She's trying to rise
Story of her boyfriend, of teenage stoned death games
Handsome lad, dead in a car
Confusion
No connections
Come 'ere
I love you
Peace on earth
Will you die for me?
Eat me
This way
The end

I'll always be true
Never go out, sneaking out on you, babe
If you'll only show me Far Arden again.

I'm surprised you could get it up
He whips her lightly, sardonically, with belt
Haven't I been through enough? she asks
Now dressed and leaving
The Spanish girl begins to bleed
She says her period
It's Catholic heaven
I have an ancient Indian crucifix around my neck
My chest is hard and brown
Lying on stained, wretched sheets with a bleeding virgin
We could plan a murder
Or start a religion.

Stoned Immaculate

I'll tell you this...
No eternal reward will forgive us now
For wasting the dawn.

Back in those days everything was simpler and more confused
One summer night, going to the pier
I ran into two young girls
The blonde one was called Freedom
The dark one, Enterprise
We talked and they told me this story
Now listen to this...
I'll tell you about Texas radio and the big beat
Soft driven, slow and mad
Like some new language
Reaching your head with the cold, sudden fury of a divine messenger
Let me tell you about heartache and the loss of god
Wandering, wandering in hopeless night
Out here in the perimeter there are no stars

Out here we is stoned
Immaculate.

The Movie

The movie will begin in five moments
The mindless voice announced
All those unseated will await the next show.

We filed slowly, languidly into the hall
The auditorium was vast and silent
As we seated and were darkened, the voice continued.

The program for this evening is not new
You've seen this entertainment through and through
You've seen your birth your life and death
you might recall all of the rest
Did you have a good world when you died?
Enough to base a movie on?.

I'm getting out of here

Where are you going?
To the other side of morning?

Please don't chase the clouds, pagodas

Her cunt gripped him like a warm, friendly hand.

It's alright, all your friends are here
When can I meet them?
After you've eaten
I'm not hungry
Uh, we meant beaten

Silver stream, silvery scream
Oooooh, impossible concentration.

Curses, Invocations

Curses, Invocations
Weird bate-headed mongrels
I keep expecting one of you to rise
Large buxom obese queen
Garden hogs and cunt veterans
Quaint cabbage saints
Shit hoarders and individualists
Drag strip officials
Tight lipped losers and
Lustful fuck salesman
My militant dandies
All strange orders of monsters
Hot on the tail of the woodvine
We welcome you to our procession

Here come the Comedians
look at them smile
Watch them dance an Indian mile
Look at them gesture
How aplomb
So to gesture everyone
Words dissemble
Words be quick
Words resemble walking sticks
Plant them they will grow
Watch them waver so
I'll always be a word man
Better then a bird man

American Night

All hail the American night!

What was that?
I don't know
Sounds like guns...thunder.

(Roadhouse Blues cuts in here with Jim doing a little audience participation section at the end.)

...Alright! Alright! Alright!
Hey, listen! Listen! Listen, man! listen, man!
I don't know how many you people believe in astrology...

Yeah, that's right...that's right, baby, I...I am a
Sagittarius
The most philosophical of all the signs
But anyway, I don't believe in it
I think it's a bunch of bullshit, myself
But I tell you this, man, I tell you this
I don't know what's gonna happen, man, but I wanna have
my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames
Alright!

The World on Fire

 
The World on Fire...Taxi from Africa...The Grand Hotel...
He was drunk   a big party last night   back going back
 in all directions   sleeping these insane hours   I'll never wake up
in a good mood again   I'm sick of these stinky boots

Lament

Lament for my cock
Sore and crucified
I seek to know you
Acquiring soulful wisdom
You can open walls of mystery
Stripshow

How to acquire death in the morning show
TV death which the child absorbs
Deathwell mystery which makes me write
Slow train, the death of my cock gives life

Forgive the poor old people who gave us entry
Taught us god in the child's prayer in the night

Guitar player
Ancient wise satyr
Sing your ode to my cock

Caress it's lament
Stiffen and guide us, we frozen
Lost cells
The knowledge of cancer
To speak to the heart
And give the great gift
Words Power Trance

this stable friend and the beast of his zoo
Wild haired chicks
Women flowering in their summit
Monsters of skin
Each color connects
to create the boat
which rocks the race
Could any hell be more horrible
than now
and real?

I pressed her thigh and death smiled

death, old friend
death and my cock are the world
I can forgive my injuries in the name of
Wisdom Luxury Romance

Sentence upon sentence
Words are the healing lament
For the death of my cock's spirit
Has no meaning in the soft fire
Words got me the wound and will get me well
I you believe it

All join now and lament the death of my cock
A tongue of knowledge in the feathered night
Boys get crazy in the head and suffer
I sacrifice my cock on the alter of silence

The Hitchhiker

Thoughts in time and out of season
The Hitchhiker
Stood by the side of the road
And leveled his thumb
In the calm calculus of reason

Hi. How you doin'? I just got back into town L.A.
I was out on the desert for awhile

Riders on the storm

Yeah. In the middle of it

Riders on the storm

Right...

Into this world we're born

Hey, listen, man, I really got a problem

Into this world we're thrown

When I was out on the desert, ya know

Like a dog without a bone
An actor out on loan

I don't know how to tell you

Riders on the storm

but, ah, I killed somebody

There's a killer on the road

No...

His brain is squirming like a toad

It's no big deal, ya know
I don't think anybody will find out about it, but...

take a long holiday

just, ah...

Let your children play

this guy gave me a ride, and ah...

If you give this man a ride

started giving me a lot of trouble

Sweet family will die

and I just couldn't take it, ya know

Killer on the road

And I wasted him

Yeah

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