ET Awful
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Fri Nov-19-04 04:34 PM
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They were digging a new foundation in Manhattan |
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They were digging a new foundation in Manhattan They discovered a slave cemetery there May their souls rest easy now that lynching is frowned upon And we've moved on to the electric chair
And I wonder who's gonna be president Tweedle dum or tweedle dumber? And who's gonna have the big Blockbuster box office this summer How 'bout we put up a wall Between the houses and the highway And then you can go your way And I can go my way
Except all the radios agree with all the TVs And all the magazines agree with all the radios And I keep hearing that same damn song Everywhere I go Maybe I should put a bucket over my head And a marshmallow in each ear And stumble around for another dumb numb week For another hum drum hit song to appear
People used to make records As in a record of event The event of people Playing music in a room Now everything is cross-marketing It's about sunglasses and shoes Or guns or drugs You choose
We got it rehashed We got it half-assed We're digging up all the graves And we're spitting on the past And we can choose between the colors Of the lipstick on the whores Cuz we know difference Between the font of twenty percent more And the font of teriyaki You tell me How does it make you feel? You tell me what's real
And they say that alcoholics are always alcoholics Even when they're as dry as my lips for years Even when they're stranded on a small desert island With no place in two thousand miles to buy beer And I wonder is he different is he different Has he changed What he's about Or is he just a liar With nothing to lie about I'm headed for the same brick wall Is there anything I can do About anything at all
Except go back to that corner in manhattan And dig deeper Dig deeper this time Down beneath the impossible pain of our history Beneath unknown bones Beneath the bedrock of the mystery Beneath the sewage system an the path train Beneath the cobblestones and the water main Beneath the traffic of friendships and street deals Between the screeching of kamikaze cab wheels Beneath everything I can think of to think about Beneath it all Beneath all get out Beneath the good and the kind and the stupid and the cruel There's a fire just waiting for fuel
_____
I just have to remind myself every once in a while how much Ani Difranco rocks :)
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theorist
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Fri Nov-19-04 04:37 PM
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"And the Empire State Building is the tallest building in New York..."
I think it's from Serpentine on Evolve.
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stellanoir
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Fri Nov-19-04 04:40 PM
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2. "they say that goldfish have no memories. . . |
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Edited on Fri Nov-19-04 04:41 PM by stellanoir
I guess their lives are much like mine. And those little plastic castles are a surprise every time."
Upon hearing that line, I went out and bought a little plastic castle and put it on my bureau. Ever since then, every time I come out of the bathroom and pass the bureau, I go, "WOW."
Have you heard her song about 9/11. I'll go look for the title and album if you're not familiar and so desire.
I think she's amazing as well.
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ET Awful
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Fri Nov-19-04 04:46 PM
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3. Yup, the live version she did of it before the official release was |
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even more moving and brilliant than the final version as far as I'm concerned.
It's called "Self-Evident"
yes, us people are just poems we're 90% metaphor with a leanness of meaning approaching hyper-distillation and once upon a time we were moonshine rushing down the throat of a giraffe yes, rushing down the long hallway despite what the p.a. announcement says yes, rushing down the long stairs with the whiskey of eternity fermented and distilled to eighteen minutes burning down our throats down the hall down the stairs in a building so tall that it will always be there yes, it's part of a pair there on the bow of noah's ark the most prestigious couple just kickin back parked against a perfectly blue sky on a morning beatific in its indian summer breeze on the day that america fell to its knees after strutting around for a century without saying thank you or please
and the shock was subsonic and the smoke was deafening between the setup and the punch line cuz we were all on time for work that day we all boarded that plane for to fly and then while the fires were raging we all climbed up on the windowsill and then we all held hands and jumped into the sky
and every borough looked up when it heard the first blast and then every dumb action movie was summarily surpassed and the exodus uptown by foot and motorcar looked more like war than anything i've seen so far so far so far so fierce and ingenious a poetic specter so far gone that every jackass newscaster was struck dumb and stumbling over 'oh my god' and 'this is unbelievable' and on and on and i'll tell you what, while we're at it you can keep the pentagon keep the propaganda keep each and every tv that's been trying to convince me to participate in some prep school punk's plan to perpetuate retribution perpetuate retribution even as the blue toxic smoke of our lesson in retribution is still hanging in the air and there's ash on our shoes and there's ash in our hair and there's a fine silt on every mantle from hell's kitchen to brooklyn and the streets are full of stories sudden twists and near misses and soon every open bar is crammed to the rafters with tales of narrowly averted disasters and the whiskey is flowin like never before as all over the country folks just shake their heads and pour
so here's a toast to all the folks who live in palestine afghanistan iraq
el salvador
here's a toast to the folks living on the pine ridge reservation under the stone cold gaze of mt. rushmore
here's a toast to all those nurses and doctors who daily provide women with a choice who stand down a threat the size of oklahoma city just to listen to a young woman's voice
here's a toast to all the folks on death row right now awaiting the executioner's guillotine who are shackled there with dread and can only escape into their heads to find peace in the form of a dream
cuz take away our playstations and we are a third world nation under the thumb of some blue blood royal son who stole the oval office and that phony election i mean it don't take a weatherman to look around and see the weather jeb said he'd deliver florida, folks and boy did he ever
and we hold these truths to be self evident: #1 george w. bush is not president #2 america is not a true democracy #3 the media is not fooling me cuz i am a poem heeding hyper-distillation i've got no room for a lie so verbose i'm looking out over my whole human family and i'm raising my glass in a toast
here's to our last drink of fossil fuels let us vow to get off of this sauce shoo away the swarms of commuter planes and find that train ticket we lost cuz once upon a time the line followed the river and peeked into all the backyards and the laundry was waving the graffiti was teasing us from brick walls and bridges we were rolling over ridges through valleys under stars i dream of touring like duke ellington in my own railroad car i dream of waiting on the tall blonde wooden benches in a grand station aglow with grace and then standing out on the platform and feeling the air on my face
give back the night its distant whistle give the darkness back its soul give the big oil companies the finger finally and relearn how to rock-n-roll yes, the lessons are all around us and a change is waiting there so it's time to pick through the rubble, clean the streets and clear the air get our government to pull its big dick out of the sand of someone else's desert put it back in its pants and quit the hypocritical chants of freedom forever
cuz when one lone phone rang in two thousand and one at ten after nine on nine one one which is the number we all called when that lone phone rang right off the wall right off our desk and down the long hall down the long stairs in a building so tall that the whole world turned just to watch it fall
and while we're at it remember the first time around? the bomb? the ryder truck? the parking garage? the princess that didn't even feel the pea? remember joking around in our apartment on avenue D?
can you imagine how many paper coffee cups would have to change their design following a fantastical reversal of the new york skyline?!
it was a joke, of course it was a joke at the time and that was just a few years ago so let the record show that the FBI was all over that case that the plot was obvious and in everybody's face and scoping that scene religiously the CIA or is it KGB? committing countless crimes against humanity with this kind of eventuality as its excuse for abuse after expensive abuse and it didn't have a clue look, another window to see through way up here on the 104th floor look another key another door 10% literal 90% metaphor 3000 some poems disguised as people on an almost too perfect day should be more than pawns in some asshole's passion play so now it's your job and it's my job to make it that way to make sure they didn't die in vain sshhhhhh.... baby listen hear the train?
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stellanoir
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Fri Nov-19-04 04:55 PM
Response to Reply #3 |
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Edited on Fri Nov-19-04 04:56 PM by stellanoir
I played it for my freeper (former hippie elder brother) and he was really mad at me for months.
Aw heck he probably still is. Oh well.
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DU
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Sun May 12th 2024, 10:34 AM
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