An American Prayer

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Awake Ghost Song

Is everybody in?

Is everybody in?

Is everybody in?

The ceremony is about to begin.

WAKE UP!

You can't remember where it was

had this dream stopped?

Awake

Shake dreams from your hair

My pretty child, my sweet one.

Choose the day and choose the sign of your day

The day's divinity

First thing you see.

A vast radiant beach in a cool jeweled moon

Couples naked race down by it's quiet side

And we laugh like soft, mad children

Smug in the wooly cotton brains of infancy

The music and voices are all around us.

Choose they croon the Ancient Ones

The time has come again

Choose now, they croon

Beneath the moon

Beside an ancient lake

Enter again the sweet forest

Enter the hot dream

Come with us

Everything is broken up and dances.

Dawn's Highway

Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding

Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind.

Me and my -ah- mother and father - and a

grandmother and a grandfather - were driving through

the desert, at dawn, and a truck load of Indian

workers had either hit another car, or just - I don't

know what happened - but there were Indians scattered

all over the highway, bleeding to death.

So the car pulls up and stops. That was the first time

I tasted fear. I musta' been about four - like a child is

like a flower, his head is just floating in the

breeze, man.

The reaction I get now thinking about it, looking

back - is that the souls of the ghosts of those dead

Indians...maybe one or two of 'em...were just

running around freaking out, and just leaped into my

soul. And they're still in there.

Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding

Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind.

Blood in the streets in the town of New Haven

Blood stains the roofs and the palm trees of Venice

Blood in my love in the terrible summer

Bloody red sun of Phantastic L.A.

Blood screams her brain as they chop off her fingers

Blood will be born in the birth if a nation

Blood is the rose of mysterious union

Blood on the rise, it's following me.

Indian, Indian what did you die for?

Indian says, nothing at all.

Newborn Awakening

gently they stir, gently rise

The dead are newborn awakening

With ravaged limbs and wet souls

Gently they sigh in rapt funeral amazement

Who called these dead to dance?

Was it the young woman learning to play the ghost song on her baby grand?

Was it the wilderness children?

Was it the ghost god himself, stuttering, cheering, chatting blindly?

I called you up to anoint the earth

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin

I called you to wish you well

To glory in self like a new monster

And now I call you to pray

To Come of Age

A military station in the desert.

Can we resolve the past

Lurking jaws, joints of time?

The Base

To come of age in a dry place

Holes and caves.

My friend drove and hour each day from the mountains

The bus gives you a hard-on with books in your lap

Someone shot the bird in the afternoon dance show

They gave out free records to the best couple

Spades dance best, from the hip.

Black Polished Chrome (Latino Chrome.)

The music was new

black polished chrome

And came over the summer

like liquid night.

The DJ's took pills to stay awake

and play for seven days

They went to the studio

And someone knew him

Someone knew the TV showman

He came to our homeroom party

and played records

And when he left in the hot noon sun

and walked to his car

We saw the chooks had written

F-U-C-K on his windshield

He wiped it off with a rag

and smiling coolly drove away

He's rich. Got a big car.

My gang will get you

Scenes of rape in the arroyo

Seduction in cars, abandoned buildings

Fights at the food stand

The dust

the shoes

Open shirts and raised collars

Bright sculptured hair.

Hey man, you want girls, pills, grass? C'mon...

I show you good time.

This place has everything. C'mon...

I show you.

Angels and Sailors

Angels and sailors

rich girls

backyard fences

tents

Dreams watching each other narrowly

soft luxuriant cars

Girls in garages, stripped

out to get liquor and clothes

half gallons of wine and six-packs of beer

Jumped, humped, born to suffer

made to undress in the wilderness.

I will never treat you mean

Never start no kind of scene

I'll tell you every place and person that I've been.

Always a playground instructor, never a killer

Always a bridesmaid on the verge of fame or over

He maneuvered two girls into his hotel room

One a friend, the other, the young one, a newer stranger

Vaguely Mexican or Puerto Rican

Poor boys thighs and buttock scarred by a father's belt

She's trying to rise

Story of her boyfriend, of teenage stoned death games

Handsome lad, dead in a car

Confusion

No connections

Come 'ere

I love you

Peace on earth

Will you die for me?

Eat me

This way

The end

I'll always be true

Never go out, sneaking out on you, babe

If you'll only show me Far Arden again.

I'm surprised you could get it up

He whips her lightly, sardonically, with belt

Haven't I been through enough? she asks

Now dressed and leaving

The Spanish girl begins to bleed

She says her period

It's Catholic heaven

I have an ancient Indian crucifix around my neck

My chest is hard and brown

Lying on stained, wretched sheets with a bleeding virgin

We could plan a murder

Or start a religion.

Stoned Immaculate

I'll tell you this...

No eternal reward will forgive us now

For wasting the dawn.

Back in those days everything was simpler and more confused

One summer night, going to the pier

I ran into two young girls

The blonde one was called Freedom

The dark one, Enterprise

We talked and they told me this story

Now listen to this...

I'll tell you about Texas radio and the big beat

Soft driven, slow and mad

Like some new language

Reaching your head with the cold, sudden fury of a divine messenger

Let me tell you about heartache and the loss of god

Wandering, wandering in hopeless night

Out here in the perimeter there are no stars

Out here we is stoned

Immaculate.

The Movie

The movie will begin in five moments

The mindless voice announced

All those unseated will await the next show.

We filed slowly, languidly into the hall

The auditorium was vast and silent

As we seated and were darkened, the voice continued.

The program for this evening is not new

You've seen this entertainment through and through

You've seen your birth your life and death

you might recall all of the rest

Did you have a good world when you died?

Enough to base a movie on?.

I'm getting out of here

Where are you going?

To the other side of morning

Please don't chase the clouds, pagodas

Her cunt gripped him like a warm, friendly hand.

It's alright, all your friends are here

When can I meet them?

After you've eaten

I'm not hungry

Uh, we meant beaten

Silver stream, silvery scream

Oooooh, impossible concentration.

Curses, Invocations

Curses, Invocations

Weird bate-headed mongrels

I keep expecting one of you to rise

Large buxom obese queen

Garden hogs and cunt veterans

Quaint cabbage saints

Shit hoarders and individualists

Drag strip officials

Tight lipped losers and

Lustful fuck salesman

My militant dandies

All strange orders of monsters

Hot on the tail of the woodvine

We welcome you to our procession

Here come the Comedians

look at them smile

Watch them dance an Indian mile

Look at them gesture

How aplomb

So to gesture everyone

Words dissemble

Words be quick

Words resemble walking sticks

Plant them they will grow

Watch them waver so

I'll always be a word man

Better then a bird man

American Night

All hail the American night!

What was that?

I don't know

Sounds like guns...thunder.

(Roadhouse Blues cuts in here with Jim doing a little audience participation

section at the end.)

...Alright! Alright! Alright!

Hey, listen! Listen! Listen, man! listen, man!

I don't know how many you people believe in astrology...

Yeah, that's right...that's right, baby, I...I am a

Sagittarius

The most philosophical of all the signs

But anyway, I don't believe in it

I think it's a bunch of bullshit, myself

But I tell you this, man, I tell you this

I don't know what's gonna happen, man, but I wanna have

my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames

Alright!

The World on Fire

The World on Fire...Taxi from Africa...The Grand Hotel...

He was drunk a big party last night back going back

in all directions sleeping these insane hours I'll never wake up

in a good mood again I'm sick of these stinky boots

Lament

Lament for my cock

Sore and crucified

I seek to know you

Acquiring soulful wisdom

You can open walls of mystery

Stripshow

How to acquire death in the morning show

TV death which the child absorbs

Deathwell mystery which makes me write

Slow train, the death of my cock gives life

Forgive the poor old people who gave us entry

Taught us god in the child's prayer in the night

Guitar player

Ancient wise satyr

Sing your ode to my cock

Caress it's lament

Stiffen and guide us, we frozen

Lost cells

The knowledge of cancer

To speak to the heart

And give the great gift

Words Power Trance

this stable friend and the beast of his zoo

Wild haired chicks

Women flowering in their summit

Monsters of skin

Each color connects

to create the boat

which rocks the race

Could any hell be more horrible

than now

and real?

I pressed her thigh and death smiled

death, old friend

death and my cock are the world

I can forgive my injuries in the name of

Wisdom Luxury Romance

Sentence upon sentence

Words are the healing lament

For the death of my cock's spirit

Has no meaning in the soft fire

Words got me the wound and will get me well

I you believe it

All join now and lament the death of my cock

A tongue of knowledge in the feathered night

Boys get crazy in the head and suffer

I sacrifice my cock on the alter of silence

The Hitchhiker

Thoughts in time and out of season

The Hitchhiker

Stood by the side of the road

And leveled his thumb

In the calm calculus of reason

Hi. How you doin'? I just got back into town L.A.

I was out on the desert for awhile

Riders on the storm

Yeah. In the middle of it

Riders on the storm

Right...

Into this world we're born

Hey, listen, man, I really got a problem

Into this world we're thrown

When I was out on the desert, ya know

Like a dog without a bone

An actor out on loan

I don't know how to tell you

Riders on the storm

but, ah, I killed somebody

There's a killer on the road

No...

His brain is squirming like a toad

It's no big deal, ya know

I don't think anybody will find out about it, but...

take a long holiday

just, ah...

Let your children play

this guy gave me a ride, and ah...

If you give this man a ride

started giving me a lot of trouble

Sweet family will die

and I just couldn't take it, ya know

Killer on the road

And I wasted him