FIRST POSTED: 01/03/11

When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez and it’s Easter time too.

And they wandered in from the city of st john without a dime.

And you may find yourself, living in a shotgun shack…

Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine.

Licorice tattoo turned a gun metal blue, scrawled across the shoulders of a dying town.

Thou shalt not steal if there is direct victim.
Thou shalt not worship pop idols or follow lost prophets.
Thou shalt not take the names of Johnny Cash, Joe Strummer, Johnny Hartman, Desmond Decker, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix or Syd Barrett in vain.

Porque me haces mucho daño. Porque me cuentas mil mentiras.
Y porque sabes que te veo. Tú a los ojos no me miras.

i love my country, by which i mean i am indebted joyfully to all the people throughout its history who have fought the government to make right where so many cunning sons and daughters, our foremothers and forefathers, came singing through slaughter came through hell and high water so that we could stand here and behold breathlessly the sight, how a raging river of tears cut a grand canyon of light.

William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll, with a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger at a Baltimore hotel society gath’rin’…

I learned the truth at seventeen that love was meant for beauty queens and high school girls with clear skinned smiles who married young and then retired.

5 Comments

  1. Looks interesting – I feel a migration coming on – might help solve a blogger identity (blogtity?) crisis.

  2. “I met a gin-soaked bar-room queen in Memphis” is one of my favourites; if it was a book or film, you’d want to keep reading/watching.

  3. Gin-soaked bar-room queens feature in the second edition of ‘for openers’… All suggestions welcome. I’m thinking about linking them to blip.fm for people who don’t know the songs. Watch this space…

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