Honeymoon Blues by W.H. Auden
I’ve got those fallout shelter blues, boys
I’ve got me a bad case of soup
There’s Campbell’s in my name
There’s ruin in my bowl
Aluminum lining my soul
And I miss the peas and flies all just the same
Well, I’ve got those bomb shelter blues, boys
I’ve got the gasmask blues
There’s nothing here to breathe
But kisses and disease
I’ve got those end-of-the-world blues
You see, I’ve got the scorched-earth blues, boys
Won’t go where the grass won’t grow
I’m staying where that filtered wind doth blow
And there’s nothing that’ll make me go
I’ve got those radiation-sickness blues
But you know,
We’ll stay in bed here all day, boys
Just sit and smoke in bed all day
Beneath the concrete sky
Safe from the world’s outside
Just lie here in bed all day
Nothing’s going to change our ways
Making it on laughs for now okay
We’ll be in bed here all the nights and days
I’ve got those missile-launching blues, boys
Those USSR nuclear blues
But with my new wife here I’m safe
Smoke in bed and talk of outer space
Tell each other lies to our face
Laugh out loud in the echoes of our fate
Take apart another ration
Until are clothes come back into fashion
We’ll last until the radiation does abate
We’ve got those subterranean bunker blues
We’ve got the air-raid blues
We’ve got the Alpha, Beta, Gamma ray blues
We’ve got the Geiger counter blues
And we’re in love all the way down to our shoes
We’re in love
So in love
How about you?
Here By Samuel Johnson
Sure, sure,
patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
And so it’s left here,
and I am too, also
wishing ewer here again, in the half-drunk
and not drunk enough light of pouring a few more,
for the remaining tug of sun that the tree’s leaves are
glossy with,
here. So long,
dear.
I am not watchful enough. Darling,
I am not window broken.
I am appealing in the substance of a
goodbye.
I am learning less and less
all the time.
It is time,
and it is near,
and it is believable.
The pop substance of the occasion.
The hurt of peeping beyond recognition.
The yells of howdy gone now forever.
So long. So long.
It is a reasonable solution of guesses.
It is a raise that’ll ante the rest of your better half.
It’s luck gone beer-battered.
It’s curiosity’s wager.
It is a slipped tear
and a clipped smile.
It is loveably dead,
now.
We wear vests of ivory. We cheat the steals.
A mohair pair of pants. A single drop of no-good poison.
The unapplied-for jobs.
The dessert receipts and the change never tipped.
It is graver than you’d think,
for the most. The guitar’s so far gone
out of tune that you’d have to pray for its safe return.
We have gut instincts.
We’ve got hungrier days than these. And
so it’s left here, still,
in the poorly placed word,
in the stances of magazine covers,
in the worry of deeper and farther away calls of distress,
in the hurry of the insects.
A lapse in antipathy leaves me on loan from my senses.
A word of care leaves me distraught with
openings and endings and missed disasters
rumbling through more foreign Louisianas than I’ll ever
know.
In the thrust of it,
below the beeline of what’s right or wrong,
sick to death of crickets,
I am coping with indigestion’s curse, and
the mostly sideways sun is never around when I might need it
most.
Being drunk at any hour,
any way or place to hide,
looking out and in,
all at once and not at all.
I am causing nobody any reasonable excesses.
I am hung with a string of iron.
Don’t forget what’s not left here.
Don’t forget what tries and what does the job.
Don’t be armed by insolent bastards of jelly-doughnut
fortunes.
We are picked less and often. Really,
it is a wonder that we are even here at all.
Anonymous Alcoholics by Robert Lowell
Variation is key. Under the hood,
checked,
in the
beginning of not-knowing. The younger task
of
blessing
just-ripe-enough avocadoes. The
scrutiny of not being done in.
The dazed
strength
of
sleeping
through alarms.
It is not so pleasing suddenly to be short-armed by
railroaders of another dimension’s skimmed vacations.
Your
moiety is all the belongings of a past
gone
sour…
All
discretion’s a function of rum-cured maladies.
Casket-cold air brisks through on a woodchip wind, and the
bolder robots fan the murder machines with steel wings.
(allwedoisallweare)
Capitalize on the letters of the
thing,
check
for dad’s face there; the tormented, harrowing, restless marl of it;
find plenty less, if it suits, there,
trying to remember
what a ringing phone
sounds like
-- while shaving in a steamed-up mirror
you have these thoughts.
All Them Russian Girls by Langston Hughes
The Russian girls play pool by the cigarette machine
I’m not coding for those types of enzymes anymore
My mistakes are all of the Chicago-bound sort
My mind’s not made or up
There goes my every anything
All I wanted to ever get or never need
The Russian girls
The Russian girls
Turn on all the fans
Kick the jukebox in the nuts
Make sure not to fall or leap in love
Again
The Russian girls
Those damn Russian girls
I’ve got no clothes that’ll ever wear what I know
Only’s the chance
And the broke of it is
That I’ll make a go of staying asleep for once
It’s mostly a song that stays stuck too
In or out of my head
Just as those Russian girls get up to leave
Or the music drowns it all out
Pinball’s sunk
Jig’s down
The carpet’s got what’s left of my drink
Let the dissidents run against office
Let the hasslers of fun vie for their own attention
You know
Even people like you and I know
Action integrated with distaste affords manglers of
oppression uneven opportunity
Intercepting all nods and moans
So stop-and-go options cleave mighty to the buttocks of hope
So you wake up to being not the same person anymore
So praying is no longer an option
Had the Russian girls at sunset
Had the first of all the last dances ever
Had a glimpse’s catch in a streetlight’s eye
Had that and that’s this and this’s that too
But the Russian girls aren’t here to stay
They’re coming for your easy style
They’re leaving by the service entrance
They’re putting lipstick on the Victorian nudes
The Russian girl are calmly coolly crushingly
Washing their hands of this
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