String Quartet
When the string quartet starts in my head,
and the insurance salesman is talking about bread,
and the iron in my blood turns to led,
I'd rather be with you instead.
The ghost of philosopher, poet and color theorist, Goethe,
Haunts room two thirty one at the La Quinta,
And Columbus just moved from the Santa Maria to the Pinta,
Before he takes the really big examination for Mensa.
And that monkey on your back grabbed the brass ring,
Because the monkey never pays for anything,
Like Sammy Davis he says, "Ring a ding-ding,"
Light a butt and starts to sing.
"Go down Moses, into the Land of Pharaoh,"
The land of the Sands and Dunes,
Or five dollar prime rib and coke spoons,
The land of dreams, dead horses and ruins.
No, you didn't leave there a minute too soon,
Nor your night life of hustling drinks in a saloon,
That was just this twelfth of June,
the Greyhound Bus left beneath the honeymoon.
Sometimes I have such a sense of loss,
Like I was the sailor that oft the albatross,
And I paid the heavy cost,
Of being forever lost.
The Rhyme of the Ancient Rhymer,
And why are we both old before our time,
As if bone ache is some sort of celestial fine,
And in the end, we are two of a kind.
