Long Strange Golden Road

I was longing to be wooed

I was ready to be humbled

by the words that you had written

by the syllables you mumbled

yeah, I was ready in my heart

to have my heart invaded

by the fervour of your passion

yes, I came to be persuaded

But when I heard your ragged voice

something switched in my perception

and I knew I was the victim

of a beautiful deception

all my once exact beliefs

like tangled threads unravelled

I walked out, stunned and liberated

and so began my travels

Keep the river on your right

and the highway at your shoulder

and the front line in your sights, pioneer

Keep your eye on the road

remember what you told her

this is all in code, my dear

You better get yourself a coat

said the handsome taxi driver

and he sighed like seven bridges

like a natural-born survivor

as we drove into the night

I could feel the forest jangling

all the choices laid before me

and their consequences dangling

We came upon a stricken ship

that must have once been splendid

the captain as he died said “Boys,

our revels now are ended”

I heard a wild holy band

playing jazz that was outrageous,

that invoked the days of rapture

when our love was still young and contagious

Keep the river on your right

and the highway at your shoulder

and the front line in your sights, pioneer

Keep your eye on the road

remember what you told her

this is all in code, my dear

In a dim-lit motel room

two sad lovers were discoursing

on the dignity of exile

and the merits of divorcing

she said “all certainty is gone”

but he leapt up, still denying,

cried “I won’t believe the flame I lit

is dead or even dying”

She left him drooling in the dust

and with rucksack packed begun her

bitter journey to the border

which is where I wooed and won her

she was Aphrodite, Helen, Thetis,

Eve among the satyrs

She was Venus in a v-neck sweater

she was all that ever mattered

Keep the river on your right

and the highway at your shoulder

and the front line in your sights, pioneer

Keep your eye on the road

remember what you told her

this is all in code, my dear

Like Dean Moriarty’s ghost

I came in quest of secret knowledge

in the winter of my journey

to a crumbling Druid college

there I read the books of lore

and contemplated in seclusion

but I took my leave embittered,

still in love with my illusions

In the drizzling Irish rain

as a tender dawn was breaking

in a doorway I stood spellbound by

the ancient music they were making

I took my breakfast with the Gods

on a blushing summer morning

till a wind blew them all away

I had misread every warning

Keep the river on your right

and the highway at your shoulder

and the front line in your sights, pioneer

Keep your eye on the road

remember what you told her

this is all in code, my dear

Under cold electric light

I watch the scenes mutating

like an old time frontier ballad

or a carousel rotating

As if in a moment from a film

with astonishing precision

the camera zooms in close

and a figure comes into vision

I’m in Tokyo, it’s dawn

and it’s raining hallelujahs

down the bright-lit neon canyons

along the sidewalks of Shibuya

I’m trying to take a stance

and rise above my contradictions

but I’m just a bunch of words in pants

and most of those are fiction

Keep the river on your right

and the highway at your shoulder

and the front line in your sights, pioneer

Keep your eye on the road

remember what you told her

this is all in code, my dear