Why you got those boots on your feet
Are you the wandering jingle jangler
That heeled high feeling easy dreamer
Lending ears to become the audience
Marking antonyms like Julius Caesar
Trying to rise before the failures fall
Sublimely for the mad beauty of it all
In desperate dreams of the final curtain
Draping the fading drama in the folds
The weatherman never read the script
And left his quill on the top of the hill
When Romeo betrayed Juliet to the fool
Stealing his chance of everlasting fame
Casting shadows before his own naming
Everything in the lies of playing games
At least that’s why he sold himself again
For *** and drudgery’s rotting role play
Once for the money and twice to show
That charity begins when gambling ends
Throwing dice at the shaming of the true
Believers in the obviously innocent song
That sang itself to deaths other oblivion
Dwelling inside the flickering footlights
Burning soles who tread the dollar-less way
To stage their very own beautiful demise
Before a paying and praying audience
There’s no business like the dying business
As death consumes all; here and ever after
The three-ring circus hits the super highway
To heavenly pay days in the after math
That stole the souls of the leading actors
Wasn’t that just the smart career move
To die happily on the wings of disaster
Farewell sweet prince an’ princesses
May flights of angels love your music.

Fame is a mask that eats up your face
Choking on the anonymity of celebrity
With all your eyes in a different place
Obscuring the last vestige of humility

Priorities rearranged in synchronicity
Shifting headlines matching duplicity
Life’s a duet with your own positivity
Decaying in lightbulbs of anonymity

That countenance divine is truly thine
For a whole fifteen minutes of nothing
But sound and a furiously hyped byline
On an empty face devoid of everything
There’s the shame and there’s the pity
There is no such thing as bad publicity.

Sally the ever so cunning clown
Said to Ratzo the equally cunning Pontiff
Hi Benny, how’s your holy business?
You cannot Benny me without an edict
It goes with the religious territory
Said his haughtily high hatted holiness
An’ there’s no business like gods business
Even to sinners and heretics like you
Ok said Sal you’ve got your edict
What does that make you, Pope?
Is that Ben the edict or Benny the dict
I’m cool with either nomenclature
The latter has more comic possibilities
But the former is beautifully ridiculous
An’ that’s always appealing to a clown
In a purely professional capacity
No, That’s Benedict, one word
And a brace of good looking syllables.

A world can be so wonderfully inarticulate
Expressing as it does each prejudice
In a blizzard of minimalist vernacular
Pursuing the obvious common denominator
Thus elevating the average meanness
To the heights of banality and expedience
Quantified by the measure of indifference
Required to fill the volume of ignorance
Necessary to potentialise each prejudice
As a true barometer of society’s preference
Calculated to protect the existing social order.

The dealings done surreptitiously
Far from prying eyes or scrutiny
Money changes hands inconspicuously
Ambition triumphs over integrity
Substance is sold ever so discretely
Damage is always consequential
Destroying the hearts true potential
Wrecking lives and community
By an injection of poisoned pity
And getting away before the crunch
Politicians are a disreputable bunch.

Shake your hands to your elbows
And your bones down to your feet
Where empty sockets in our pockets
Remind us where eyes used to see
When our shoes really hit the street

Walking on water is something else
Treading grapes a sweeter experience
While each doth not presage the other
Sour wine tastes so much sweeter
Than a dust filled glass of dry water

Loaves and fishes in their dishes
Feed the hungry eyes of multitudes
Eating miraculously each mirage
Believing it to be the fools’ banquet
Transforming hunger with a new image

Breaking bones is not what it used to be
When the economy of flesh is hunger
And salvation is a calcium paradise
Costing each of our arms at least a leg
When life is damage imitating limitation.

The Chelsea Hotel
We remember it well
An' its splendid interior decor
By never setting foot there
A very Bohemian Rhapsody
Two Dylans are thrilling
One Bob an' one Thomas
One life and one death
A song and poetic requiem
A Sad Eyed Beautiful moment
Another unquietly into the night
Embracing the dread valley below
Sweet Syd and Saint Nancy
Perished like lovers in drama
No light at yonder window
For a rocking Romeo and Juliet
Breathless in period splendour
Lovers in tragically beautiful embrace
Immortality in the perfect place
Edie set her room on fire
Our heroine couldn't get much higher
As the ceiling just got lower
Another window was another score
When the ceiling hit the floor
Unbroken she was beautiful like a woman
Dancing eyes across the hotel floor
Her world moving in that revolving door
The Chelsea Hotel has more to tell
That Hotel California couldn't rival
That's why it’s there in New York City
An island of dreams in a concrete ocean
Where all lost writers find a paradise
Checking in is our one remaining dream
Checking it out our beautiful possibility.