AMERICAN SLAVES



Happiness hides beyond these gates --
Silver spoons and China plates.
But here we breed and slave and rot
And thank our oppressors for the little we’ve got.
Of those who dare to take a chance
By running away to wealth and romance
In far off parts of these United States,
A few of them make it; the rest do not.
The majority blind ourselves to our fates,
Play deaf, dumb and numb to what circumstance
Enslaves us to our pitiful plot.

We all are slaves to our family ties
And to whatever totems our parents baptize
Us to at birth. (This chain is mine!!!)
These are the slave shacks to which we resign
Our days with our cousins and uncles and aunts.
These are the factories that sprout up like plants,
Like tobacco, like cotton. None dares criticize
The poisons they make here and on which we shall dine.
Our sadistic oppressors we all idolize,
Because we need their bucks to finance
This earthly hell, this grim design.

These are our children and these are their fires
Which we sell for their heat to the sinister choirs
Of extinguishing gangster whose ways and means
Are more perverse than the kings and queens
Who once held their serfs in a feudal trance,
From Charlemagne onward — in England, in France,
In Russia, etc.-- while the clergy, with pliers,
Ripped out their genitals, backbones and spleens,-
Then played them like puppets from invisible wires.
These are our children. See them dance.
See them play out their pitiful scenes.

These are our hands. We sell them in pairs.
Hands that sweat while the bossperson swears
And threatens. Hands that would become wings.
Hands we fold in praise to kings
And shareholders whose childish extravagance
Feeds on our foolish intolerance
Toward new ideas which could banish our cares,
Hands we shackle with wedding rings,
Hands that get slapped if any dares
To point a finger at the arrogance
Of our proud oppressor, who mockingly sings.

We’re American slaves, ravaged and torn
From four hundred years of shucking corn
And parking cars. The needle glides
Toward the breaking point. The future rides
On our backs like Rajas on their elephants.
But this is of little relevance.
For it’s liberation and change we scorn.
Beyond these gates, happiness hides.
But don’t disturb our stupor to warn us
That we are but sleepwalkers, ghosts at a seance,
Oblivious to which way the avalanche slides.


Words and Music by Galen Green c 1989

AFTER-IMAGE



1.
This year’s been one in which I’ve thought of you and other friends, and wondered
How we do these passive panic dances, these old and new modes of alienation from
The light of who we are and...how we become the tree of our knowledge of what we
Want each other to see, when I think about you and you about me.

Watching a candle, I think again tonight of you and me and us and where we’d be,
If not for our brief sharing of those bright moments long ago on our way to these
True and separate moments here and now. I agree that sentimentality is hardly
Ever the right emotion. Yet, when I think of how we outgrew the past and each
Other, I close my eyes on the white after-image of memory, distant, tight.

2.
The clock on the wall tells me where to go, into the future in the only machine
I know. This jar of cider is all I have to show for the thousands of minutes I’ve
Dragged my fleshy freight from my mother’s feet where I used to play to my mother’s
Feet, which have followed me all the way to here and now. My breath just wants to
Say that it has enjoyed hosting my wonderful weight.

Watching this candle tonight, I cannot delay a moment longer in swallowing the bait
Of your face in my memory which from below consciousness swallows me. And here
I’ll stay from now until it all becomes too late to think anymore and it’s time to
Stop and grow into next year and tomorrow and time to wait and...time to sit and
Contemplate the gray.

3.
This year’s been one in which I’ve sat on the lawn and thought of you and other
Friends who’ve gone into the touchless past. Tonight, I yawn with joy and think
Of you...and prop my feet on an empty crate and rub my weary eyes and sip this
Jar of cider and the lies I tell myself as this once-bright candle dies.

The clock in my memory tells me not to treat these thoughts of you too rough,
Lest they rise and body forth into this air like the sweet reality of the you
I knew at the dawn of my days on earth: your shoulders, breasts and thighs
Composed by the gods of love, perfect, neat. This year’s been one in which I’ve
Played the pawn to the white queen of your memory, sketched on a sheet of blank
After-image, this empty street.


Words and Music by Galen Green c 1986

THE KID THAT WAS ME
(to the tune of “My Bonnie”)

1.
I think that I need some advice from
the little kid I used to be,
‘Cause adulthood has scrambled my vision
and makes me deny what I see.

REFRAIN:
Bring back...oh bring back...
Oh bring back the kid that was me...was me
Bring back...oh bring back...
Oh bring back the kid that was me.

2.
I need a good heart-to-heart talk with
that smart little kid that I was --
To remind me the emperor’s naked
and to show me the evil he does.
(...repeat refrain...).
3.
I need him (her) to yank back the curtain --
that smart little kid that was me--
To show me the wizard’s a humbug,
so that I can leave Oz and be free.
(...repeat refrain...)
4.
That little kid knew crap from Christmas
and called a spade a spade.
That smart little kid that I once was
looked the world in the eyes unafraid.
(...repeat refrain...)
5.
Oh bring back that kid for ten minutes,
and let these eyes see how it be.
Let me face this mad world through the eyes
of that uncensored kid that was me.
(...repeat refrain twice...)


Words by Galen Green c 1989