CANTO 73 Surplus syllables

 

Surplus syllables and long umbilicals

snakin’ out in phrases it just amazes:

There’s a tether to the weather will this rainin’ ever stop

I got blues in my toes and my ears are gonna pop

five’ll get you twenty no more good and plenty

what am I bid hey watch it kid

There’s a sailor and a tailor in the incubator rocket

it was loaded and exploded in the taxpayer’s pocket

Tear out your hair run up and down the stair

it ain’t right awake all night

so make it take it process your own advice

you got some time it’s prime but gone in a thrice!

Oh the whip uncoils and the radiator boils

while the cracked egg poaches all around the roaches

There’s a noose in the sluice where the waste water flies

and a rhymin kinda diamond in the songwriter’s eyes

Yeah pick up the grab bag empty out the hot swag

sweet perfume in an empty room

run to the guru— screw you— ask him for the truth

he say I’m rigged and you fixed the old ballot booth

doin’ legalistic clap-trap semantic flip-flop

while the other half grooves

You got a gander salamander pokin’ round the sty

you got a needle you can wheedle thru a rich man’s eye

Cut your losses drinkin’ hot sauces

no time at all the coroner will call

now every song is a gong like a puff of smoke

we all makin’ money ain’t it funny and we all goin’ broke

Like a frantic fat toad

burnin’ up the road til you get hit by a semi-demi-quaver

Oh there’s a jitter in the glitter of the diamond-studded noose

and a stutter in the flutter of your nervous excuse

I knocked on the gate and they said pay your freight

you got no pass you’re out on your ass

So I picked up the pieces said sweet jumpin’ Jesus

listened to my head and this is what it said:

See weather balloons like giant cocoons spinnin’ out silk

made of mothers milk

hey does it matter really matter what this patter’s gettin’ down to

light a cigar with a star if you got to

Now connect the dots of the leopard’s spots and you get a grid

where the secret’s hid

You can read it and repeat it from a dead sea scroll:

sometimes the answer is a dancer doin’ rock and roll

Roll out the bones onto ice cream cones see open skies

through snake eyes