A poem written while listening to Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row". |
The Barren Arid Sun I can see them gathering for the lecture On the value of timeless fumes. The room gets filled with poison As they read up on their David Hume. They can hear the leaky faucet. It’s a pattern etched in their minds But the source of their suppression Is everything else combined. I blow the horn, tied around my neck And scream to everyone But I can’t even hear myself From the Barren, Arid Sun. Humpty Dumpty seemed so real And confident about his life But he keeps a bewildered secret (He always carries around a knife). He puts on a happy mask For the wedding of the king and queen But he’s been here sometime before It’s nothing he hasn’t seen. So Humpty sneaks into the courtyard Away from all the fun He’s gazing at the sky Into the Barren, Arid Sun Down on the moon, they’re ironing the curtains They’re preparing for a night of games Out walks Hamlet from his spaceship cruiser Unleashing a heavy rain As he finishes in a pant They laugh at him in the politest way Ophelia tries to comfort him But he repeats "It’s not okay" The Lunies, they have no mercy They haunt him until he’s forced to run Forced to run up the spiral staircase To the Barren Arid Sun Jack the Rabbit, he owns the city And keeps his memories in a book He always replied when you called his name But now he doesn’t even look He killed his last chance at fate But he knows it’ll all be fine He’ll just continue throwing bricks And drawing outside of the lines But there’s one thing he’ll never remember: He used to live here with a nun They discussed sacred prophecies About the Barren Arid Sun They sent in Jiminy the Cricket To protect the golden bee hive The termites who come from Washington Are trying to eat them all alive The centurion, some fisherman’s son Is scratching his recruitment pen He’s signing people up for duty But he never tells them when Jiminy keeps a sign, outside his door: "Don’t hand me no zombie gun Not unless you let me fire it From the Barren Arid Sun" In the high noon, all of the angels And the ghosts of eternity Come down to inspect the mortals Just to see what they could be Then they fly them to the clouds Where the chair of enlightenment Is waiting on the mushroom Where Dr. Oppenheimer spent Is whole life, trying to find The secret of what’s already been done: Putting out the fires On the Barren Arid Sun |