Tiptoe Holligans Blues #1

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Tenses eyes follow my feet
They make sure my steps ain’t to far left
And that my shoes are still brown
Together we engage in the most awful theft
Building up a rack full of hats
And a pint of Canadian bones
Collect your thoughts and your fake taxes
Another night in the faceless room alone

Throw o’erboard your calypso heat-gun
Kill of her inevitable wedding dress
Keep for yourself your thimble of fun
And collect up your coins to bless
I wait on your word-in-mouth again
It either comes from the fridge or the phone
Both will not keep, both will stain
Another night in the bullet train alone

Financial remarks haunt the battlefield
Hostile at God’s awful trap
And shouting for the peasants to yield
And for the heavens not to collapse
Empty verse fills the air tonight
Jewels shine above your crimson zone
Another month, another word to confound us
Another night in the bell jar alone

Constable Jones helps flog the frogs
And kill the helpless others
He broke all their heads with a log
And ended them; and their mothers too
Fools surround your earthly scholar
Then for centuries do nothin but moan
They put me in my place of dollars
Another night in city hall alone
"Mama's in the factory, she ain't got no shoes
Daddy's in the alley, he's lookin' for the fuse
I'm in the streets with the tombstone blues"



When one is highly alert to language, then nearly everything begs to be a poem.
— James Tate