Nearest Thing to Hip

There used to be a café a few blocks away,

open seven days, called The Brilliant Mistake

where a crow-haired girl with scarlet lips

and slender hips served up coffee and cake

on a crackling stereo the ghosts of Sun Ra,

Charlie Parker, Miles and Coltrane blew

I’d kick back in my chair, that sweet honey’d jazz

in the air, the sun shining through

it was the nearest thing to hip

it was the nearest thing to hip

in this shithole and it’s gone

Everywhere that I go I see streets that are low

on distinction and high on the banal and the bland

How did we get to this? We plumbed the abyss

by the twisted grace of the law of supply and demand

Well, there’s no use crying and no use sighing over

stone, wood, wire, glass and cement

but there’s a little record store with a wooden floor

that ain’t there no more that I used to frequent

it was the nearest thing to hip

in was the nearest thing to hip

in this shithole and it’s gone

Now I need to get out of this hullabaloo

and I remember an old-fashioned old bar I once knew

with an old-fashioned barman wearing old-fashioned clothes

but when I get there it’s been bulldozed

so I follow my nose down Comatose Lane

through the stripped back, ripped up wastes

of Woebegone Square

till I find myself on Deadbeat Street,

feet beginning to ache, despair in the air

the only thing bright in this blighted town

are the billboard adverts everywhere displayed

like mocking shades

And the musty, dusty second-hand bookstore

is now a scum-encrusted amusement arcade

it was the nearest thing to hip

it was the nearest thing to hip

in this shithole and it’s gone