One Crowded Hour

One Crowded Hour-Augie March

Now should you expect to see something that you hadn't seen

In somebody you'd known since you were sixteen;

if love is a bolt from the blue, then what is that bolt but a glorified screw?

and that doesn't hold nothing together

Far from these nonsense bars and their nowhere music it's making me sick

And I know it's making you sick

There's nothing there, it's like eating air

It's like drinking gin with nothing else in

And that doesn't hold me together.

But for one crowded hour, you were the only one in the room

And I sailed around all those bumps in the night to your beacon in the gloom

I thought I had found my golden September in the middle of that purple June

But one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin

And I know you like your boys to take their medicine

From the bowl with a silver spoon

Who run away with the dish and scale the fish by the silvery light of the moon

Who were taught from the womb to believe till the tomb

That as far as their bleeding eyes see

Is a pleasure pen, meant for them, builded and rent for them

Not for the likes of me

Not for the like of you and me

And for one crowded hour, you were the only one in the room

And I sailed around all those bumps in the night to your beacon in the gloom

I thought I had found my golden September in the middle of that purple June

But one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin

Oh but the green-eyed harpy of the salt land

She takes into hers my hand

She says, "Boy I know you're lying

Oh but then, so am I,"

And to this I said "Oh well."

Well put me in a cage full of lions, I learned to speak lion

In fact I know the language well

I picked it up while I was versing myself in the languages they speak in hell

That night, the silence gave birth to a baby

They took it away to her silent dismay

And they raised it to be a lady

Now she can't keep her mouth shut

And for one crowded hour, you were the only one in the room

And I sailed around all those bumps in the night to your beacon in the gloom

I thought I had found my golden September in the middle of that purple June

But one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin

For one crowded hour, you were the only one in the room

Well I played a few songs for those bumps in the night

In fact I played this very tune

You said, "What is this six-stringed instrument but an adolescent loom?"

And one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin.