Fake Jive

It's just a painting, it's just a song

Wonderous plate, miraculous rag on

Holding the promise of happiness high

Beauteous speck in a dilated eye

O you draw yourself a little leaner

And you sing like somebody meaner than you are

Don't you tiger

Of paper? A many false windowed thing

A kite in a lecturing wind

Awaiting intellectual strike

Cast the pens down in the dome tonight

Have you read the poets lately?

They don't get a weekly, monthly, bi-annual

Now you may cry but I doubt you will

Ten years is all it took

Ten years in thrall to a lickspittle crook

Now you don't know the crooked lay of the land

You don't trust any man to shake your hand without

Taking a thumb or a finger

How the vilest scent will linger while the sweetest

Pass away so swiftly

On this patriot day sound the national band

Sweep the plain you sunburnt and bland

And I'll pollute the perfect stanza for music

In a deft show of hubris unplanned

Hitch a skiff with a dusky daughter

Sail down a river of grey water musics

Keeping the drain alive with all this fake jive

Life is a painting, life is a song

It holds the promise of happiness

I could tell you where it goes wrong

As good as tell you why the longing long

You the poor painter, average singer

Maybe you never went through the ringer enough

Or loved it so you came out wrung

Like a cracked bell I continue to tell

The same sad tale and toll all my failures to hold any note

Or I quaver and cast about for the bluest port

In a black and white storm

O I've got lots of advice, never listen to any advice

Be a pole, hoist your own flaming petard

And when you blow, blow hard