hooray say the roses, today is blamesday
and we are red as blood.

hooray say the roses, today is Wednesday
and we bloom wher soldiers fell
and lovers too,
and the snake at the word.

hooray say the roses, darkness comes
all at once, like lights gone out,
the sun leaves dark continents
and rows of stone.

hooray say the roses, cannons and spires,
birds, bees, bombers, today is Friday
the hand holding a medal out the window,
a moth going by, half a mile an hour,
hooray hooray
hooray say the roses
we have empires on our stems,
the sun moves the mouth:
hooray hooray hooray
and that is why you like us.

when God created love he didn't help most
when God created dogs He didn't help dogs
when God created plants that was average
when God created hate we had a standard utility
when God created me He created me
when God created the monkey He was asleep
when He created the giraffe He was drunk
when He created narcotics He was high
and when He created suicide He was low

when He created you lying in bed
He knew what He was doing
He was drunk and He was high
and He created the mountians and the sea and fire at the same time

He made some mistakes
but when He created you lying in bed
He came all over His Blessed Universe.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pur whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the ****** and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to ***** up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.

it was the first time I'd
realized
that.

You can leave wires alone, hidden away
and they still get tangled, ******* in knots,
twisted around in angry coils, like a pit-full
of leathery snakes.  Everything appears to work still fine

and it looks nice and shiny, like it always did.
Dusted off every week. Our visitors admire it,
and family don’t notice it anymore.
It’s part of the furniture, there every day;

useful and pleasurable though it is, in its way,
if it broke, it would be replaced. So why,
though untouched in anyway
are the wires in such a state?

So, moving the furniture, you try
and release them. You try and follow the trail,
from where they used to run straight and true,
to where they now entwine and choke

each other with their tiny knotted fists of flex.
And you think this is beyond the laws of physics,
That an inanimate object can come alive
With such malevolence.

You look for explanation, such as
spectral interference or evil black-eyed
midnight fairies with sharp pin-teeth,
who, in glinting moonlight, spin and prance,

Whirling the wires around, as if in some frenzied pagan dance.
Rather, though, (and you know) it’s the small
unseen twists of time that, uncorrected in neglect,
have snared the wires in their own catch net.

However did it come to this? I ask her,
and she looks at me, as if
I shouldn’t be surprised. For so
it happens every time.

the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.

there's no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.

nobody ever finds
the one.

the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill

nothing else
fills.