City on the Make "Who Let the Dogs Out?"
Copyright 2012
Big ups to Steve Lane.

California Dreaming. Who’s your Ronald Reagan?
Traveling and drinking, got no time for television.
Really, isn’t it something, waking up early in the morning?
This ain’t your daddy’s motorcade or chronic disbelieving.
Most people are awful, and I don’t find it surprising-
That most people think they’re special and entitled and deserving-
Every one is a winner but humanity is a problem,
For every one I know is fucking starving.

Trans formative McCarthyism, change your name to Bronson
Supremely freakish deeds under the gaze of the Magnificent
May you never have to beg, may you never go to prison
Shall you never be mistaken- 99 is not 100.
 
Purgatory dreams in the glow of the television
Of preserved living rooms of Goldwater conservatives.
Money clutched in the talons of post-modern theologians
From a top a Rocky Mountain to most Soviet of Unions
And it goes…
Mississippi river, how have I become so ancient?
Every woman a season, every woman an ocean.
Every flesh constructed hyper complex mortal incarnation-
I sense your disappointment and I pray for my sedation.
Early morning coffee and the eternal damnation
Cross town traffic and we’ve got a lot in common
I don’t hate nobody but they’re all so fucking boring
And you’ve got to kiss their children if you want to win elections.
 
Missouri on the worried mind of Samuel Langhorn Clemens
Shoving through commuter crowds towards face of Andrew Jackson
You can probably bet I’m sleeping through that Book of Revelations,
Falling from the wagon all confused and fascinating.
Some people are born with a sense of deep connection-
Towards their fellow human and all complex organisms.
I suppose that every one is a lover but their broken
And you’ve got to stroke some egos if you want to fuck their girlfriends.
 
California Dreaming on that early Ronald Reagan
Until they've carved my ugly schnoz out from some South Dakotan mountain.
Can't you feel that monumental grace and adoration?
This ain't your daddy's beer spitting weak ass player hating.
California Dreaming on that early Ronald Reagan
Until they've carved my ugly schnoz out from some South Dakotan mountain.
I Suppose eventually we'll all be bombed to smithereens
From the superior altitude of someone else's moral certainty.*

I'd like to say that I've been there
That I've knelt and drank the waters
But I've never seen the mountain
And I've never met the giver.

Bumping elbows with/ bellied up against/ Your lovers and your dinner guests/ Your public truths and secrets kept/ all your dreams and your life's regrets/ they hold gratitude and deep respect/ Every one you’ve ever met/ They feel love and joy and emptiness.
Be kind to yourself, sometimes.

The moon and the stars and a sparrows nest/ somebody’s head lay on my chest/ I smell your hair and I feel your breath/ In every bed I’ve ever slept/ I feel your pain and I know your stress/ These rooms in which I haven’t set/ a foot inside or cleaned or kept/ I know them well yet none the less.
Be kind to yourself, sometimes.

A crown of pity, a crown of strength/ adorn me now this unexplained/ If you miss me on that train/ dip our jewelry in Champagne/ Cross town traffic chronic pain/ slumber through the morning rains/ and all is fair and nothing gained/ I sleep beneath the aeroplanes.
Be kind to yourself, sometimes.

* An appropriation of language from Lewis H Lapham's introduction to Theater of War: In Which the Republic Becomes an Empire (The New Press, 2003): "Planes could come and go at will, dropping their bombs like sermons from the superior altitudes of moral certainty." A tip of the hat to the aforementioned gentleman, whose writings have guided a drip feed of ideas' concerted materialization into this pool of language and perverse thought.