(Brooklyn’s inimitable Chris D. Butler recorded this and guided me through a simple piano part (I played piano!) and quasi-mastered the track “in-board” for me, begging me to get it done right – then I ineptly and jarringly substituted one word of revised, (bedroom-sung) lyrics because I can’t be both inaccurate and rude about the working class without losing all sense of myself. Sorry, Chris (and listeners), and thank you, Chris!!)

Rule by a fool isn’t cool, to be sure
He couldn’t even say “nuclear”
He talked like (and, well, okay, murdered) the poor
Without ever enduring their fate
Rule by the rulers as cool as to be
That’s what we call “meritocracy”
By ANYONE OTHER THAN YOU till I see
Your embarrassment redden to hate
I see your embarrassment redden to hate
And now I’m in a

Blue
Blue State
I’m in a blue
Blue State
Without your love I am utterly blue
What in the world do you want me to do no don’t answer that, it’s okay, really, no wait

I’m in a blue state

Hand in your land to a banker or king
If you want it all squandered on gambling
The banditry generally stand to the bling
At an inverse proportional rate
So swaddled in twaddle and pablum and puns
In bubbles to match the financial ones
With our knolwedge we play “Keep away” from the Huns
From the barbarians at the gate
And now there are barbarians at the gate
Outside of my

Blue
Blue state
I’m in a blue
Blue state
Without your love I may be turning blue
What in the world do you want me to do no no it’s okay, hang on, no really no wait:

(Blue state.)

Whether it’s breadth of the wallet or head
Is how the “ocracy”‘s “merited”
And which it’d be best to inherit instead
To be master of everyone’s fate:
Make of the hats or what’s under the hats?
Plutocrats or Technocrats
There was another word ended with that
It was hang on, no it’s okay, really, no wait!

“Liberal” as literally “fit to be free”
Rituals of sensitivity
Tell us who’s meant in our presence to speak
Or our young men and women to date
So every four years we find out who prefers
Their CEOs to their managers
I guess we’re okay till the next one occurs and it’s
“Darling, don’t say it’s too late”
And it well might be “Darling, don’t say it’s too late”
For me and my

Blue
Blue state
I’m in a blue
Blue state

Okay: Your tolerance even for intellect falls
The more the goddamned intellectuals
Treat whether the unlettered
Or poor should be culls
As the meaning of all the debate

And I’m in a blue state.

Forever
is gonna take me to the stars.
Forever
is gonna wake me when the car’s
arrived and started br[]aking,
every drive the court of a king.
The lever
with which I’ll terraform the world,
no not this one you’d wanna share’ll
be, from where I’m standing,
Forever
It’s where I’m from.
I’LL RETURN
TO KINGDOM COME COME COME COME COME
While we burn I’m syncing
Up with the quintillions coming
Not eight bil with which I’m slumming
Who come to nothing anyway
So it had to be today
It had to be today

Forever
is gonna grab you when you fall
“The Devil,
You say, “there’s no invisible”,
no hand on which I’m countin
throwing my friend off the mountain
The level
you need to be deplatformed to,
the not-quite-working class for you
‘cos, from the way it’s trending
Forever
is no place for scum:
I’M THE KING
OF KINGDOM COME COME COME COME COME
My distinction is in
all the pomp and the pageantry
that an undiscovered country
has for them as won’t de-
lay
So it had to be today
AFTER ALL
AFTER
ALL
ALL!
ALL!!
ALL.!!!

WHATEVER
Is gonna keep me from the fires
Forever
is gonna sweep away the buyer’s
remorse after the bubble,
and the poor so deplorable
INDIFFER-
ENCE is what there is FOREVER of
with HATE contemptible as LOVE
from both their way of ending
There never
has been, in sum
ANYWHERE
BUT KINGDOM COME COME COME COME COME
I can bear being and
fending off the uninvited
better than to serve outside it
where the night’d
never stay
so it had to be today
it had to be today.
AFTER ALL …
It had to be today.

I want to hold you
I want to hold you like a human shield
Somebody sold you
So now you’re pressed to me:
you’re my accessory.

Fashion is gold, too,
when it’s a profitable degree revealed,
so the deplorables knew
I’m what’s best to be –
you’re my accessory.

And when it’s all due –
they’re gonna come through YOU to get to ME –
that’s when you’ll find out you’re dead to me,
as I melt away like smoke.

I should’ve told you –
Ere ends my party too soon, you’re all,
Just fine to be at your funeral,
So long as I’m the one
that’s WOKE,
WOKE,
WOKE.
I will be WOKE,
WOKE,
WOKE,

WOKE.

I want to hold you –
I want to hold you like a human shield –
And then I’ll fold you
For the next divine soiree.
Dearly beloved:
We are gathered here…

Today.

That girl I gave my chauffeur
(That girl I’m holding down) –
She knows my game’s not over:
You know I own this town.
You don’t say “Lay hands off her:”
You sigh and go to bed.
It’s complicated,
it’s complicated,
it’s complicated
The way you tolerate it

Those times I sicced my pitbull
Upon those playground kids –
“Gee I’m so sorry it pulled
free: Don’t make a case of it.”
You say “It’s not so simple:
They’re always playing dead.
It’s complicated.
It’s complicated,
it’s complicated!”
the way you tolerate it:

“Some girls are not so decent!
Shoot daggers from their eyes!
It’s just a ‘he said, she said,”
She should have to compromise,
Or there can be no reset:
Unlock the cellar door…
Stop tearing off’ The _______ That
We Can’t Find A Partner For.

That girl I gave my chauffeur
Keeps Trying to Scratch his Face!!!
Before that, it was “Oh, for
Pete’s sake, won’t you clean the place.”
But mostly it’s a “go” for
That little thing you said:
“It’s complicated.”
“It’s complicated.”
“It’s complicated.”

Your bill and someone paid it:
Making your “we did” “they did”
is Complicated.

by Des Pickard

Remember when they wouldn’t be spying,
shutting down precrime
with their prescience? 
Were we so evidently resigned,
ready to see mi-
croaggressions
as no better than the military kind? 
Remember peacetime? –
See above.  
Who wrote the ten Amendments to
the Ten Commandments of Love? 

Did unacknowledged legislators
pray to a Hey Jude-
iciary:
“Is it okay how the Excec-u-
tioner is now the
judge and jury?   
If you’re worried
you can leave poll queries
at usa.gov –
Who wrote the ten Amendments to
the Ten Commandments of Love? 

Commandment One, you’ll find no greater love before Me;
Two: your TLDR convictions;
Three: you’ll let you and your community
be entertaining fictions;
Four, Five: You will rest as you did
with your mom and your dad
the Queen and the King:
All the rest: you will never murder our love
– or anybody much, not while I’m [loo]king. 

Did manufacturers of bromides
manage our broken magna cartas
saying “manumission was a thrill ride
buddy but home is where the hardest
and the most important part is,
where it’s priorities
come to shove.” 
Commandments of …
Commandments of… 

The hotter things are getting for us,
blood’ll run more as
Gordon Gecko’s –
does Narcissus vanish
in this puddle if
there’ll be no more echoes
as we heckle from the sofas,
helplessly hope for
Gorbachev –
Who wrote the ten amendments to
the Ten Commandments of Love?
the Ten Commandments of Love?
the Ten Commandments of Love?

My mom chose not to see the doctor:
She swore she’d take a nap instead.
My mom was stubborn, there’s nobody could have talked her
Out of dying in bed.
Our next decision would’ve shocked her,
– Like either ought to
Have won –
But we’re calling it:
No need to chart the speed we’re falling at:
Decree or not their deed appalling that
Move on
Cthulhu Fhtagn

Our next decision who to war on –
And how much more it’s gonna take?
There’s only so much 911, and CPR, and
Pleading loved ones awake
Then days into life after Karin,
Instead of Russia Iran.
We’re calling it
There’s only so old that we’re all gonna get
What could have sold this as enthralling yet,
Her son?
Cthulhu Fhtagn

At last alone with her decision
Determined drowning into sleep
Long-contemplated lapse from our religion
of “beep beep beep beep” &c.

Four score and something years are plenty
Like any here will live that long
If I’m still singing this long past two thousand twenty
Then I’m possibly wrong
Try telling your average cognoscenti
They’re the deplorable one
But we’re calling it
What’s done is done and not for bawling at
With everyone convinced it’s all been said
And done
Cthulhu, Chtulhu Fhtagn

I’m in the Junta
I’ve been all along
Over three hundred
Million strong
who can, if we want to
Submit our referral
To pick the leader of the
Free World

There’s never been a dictator in history
Simply because of he wants to be
They all had to be the big date of some coterie
Wealthy and wonderfully Free

I’m in the Junta
I’ve been all along
Everyone to sing this song
Till all of the punters
Are shooting their pearl
To pick the leader of the
Free World

There’s never been a dictator never got sore
At some of the henchmen he hired before
It gets difficult to keep straight from
Off in a corner
Just who’s giving orders to whom

When you’re in a smoke filled room
And this is such a smoke filled room
But throw off your gloom
You’re all – I assume!!!
in the
Junta

I’m in the Junta
I’ve been all along
Dare anyone to
Say it’s wrong
The lightning, the thunder
A Heaven has hurled
We pick the leader of
The Free World
The Free World
The Free World, the
Free world

Is it any wonder
I’m happy in the
right Junta?

Now the Troglodytes return to the foundation
And the gotta-be-rights concerned with nothing so much as miscegenation
Between that nation
And themselves
And perturbations
In the bedrock that noone delves
Like the Troglodytes

Some of the foreigners like that fundamentalism
And we have got an Enlightenment they can see is better yeah, but so far it isn’t
Between those prisoners
In their bays
And the decision
“Rob or bomb them right back to the days
Of the Troglodytes”

Cos “we’ve gotta be fightin’ ’em there or be fightin’ ’em here”
The very thought that we’re writing their recruitment flyers
For them – faster than they can disappear
And could be trading brawn for brains
Might just require associating with the indigenous strains

So the Troglodytes are following a vision
We maybe oughtta invite them into a light we’d share with them yeah but that’d mean religion
And individua
lism balks
It will be stygian
It will be stygian
It will be dark
In the place one finally talks
to the Troglodytes

Slide guitar (and sound board): the magnificent Chris Butler