Songs In the Key of Your Face

Woody Guthrie's 33rd Resolution
Now I lay me down, bone-tired and bruised
Perchance to dream of better days might never be
I pray the lord my soul to keep
But even if he's there, I'm told,
He pays no heed to guys like me
In 1942, Woody Guthrie wrote his New Year's
Resolutions down, that they might guide us
Through the darkest nights
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Number 1, work more and better
Number 8, write a song a day
Thirteen, read lots of good books
Number 4, shave
Nineteen, keep Hoping Machine running
Thirty-two, make up your mind
Thirty-one, love everybody
And Number 33,
Wake up and fight
When we were little, we learned of heroes
Of a world of fairy-tales, our own to make
But we're just people, trying to make sense out of things that don't
And Supermen rule the Earth instead of save the day
In a world turned upside down, where
Superstition trumps all reason
Woody Guthrie's voice still rings out through the darkest times
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Number 15, learn people better
Number 8, write a song a day
Twenty-seven, beat the fascists
Number 4, shave
Nineteen, keep Hoping Machine running
Thirty-two, make up your mind
Thirty-one, love everybody
And Number 33,
Wake up and fight
Little Black Dog
Remember that time that aliens invaded and a little black dog captured all our hearts
Built a star-fighter with her own two paws, went out and kicked their asses like Captain Picard
Remember all those nukes hung over our heads by stolid old men who preyed upon our fears
Then a little black dog deconstructed dogma, no there's no more war or strife or tears
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Nobody wants to hear a song about a little black dog
But then my sister told me all the stuff hers did
I haven't fact-checked all of it, but it's better than the world we've made
A slobbering super-ego to our id
Remember when we used to get old and die, at least until that fateful pet therapy day
When doctors let us play with a little black dog, no we're always 29 and we all get laid
Sure she can be a bitch to her giant cousin Hondo
Or sometimes when she doesn't want to come back in
But I think we can forgive a modicum of pathos
To a quadruped who saved us all from aliens, mortality and old white men
Remember how we used to wail and gnash over how, if and whether someone liked us enough
Then a little dog licked us even when we were jerks and now we understand unconditional love
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Real Americans
As the days get colder and the weekend rolls around
And big lights make halos at edges of towns
And cars line the streets as the sun goes down
And the faithful all take their pew
And they wear the same colors and cheer the same things
Share blankets, hot chocolate, and gossip like teens
They're Republicans, Democrats, some even Greens
And they love their kids every damn bit much as you
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Real Americans don't share your values, they're way more than able to live by their own
Real Americans don't worship Jesus, they worship who and whatever they want to, or don't
They're dumb and profound, gay and straight, pink and brown, and, like anyone, cut em they bleed
And most don't waste half a drop sweating what self-described Real Americans think they should be
It's a fool's prayer that asks for forever-blue skies
Some time's it's a storm, sometimes someone dies
And phonecals breed phonecalls and potluck and pies
And if you need it, someone's got room
They don't ask for your papers or voter ID
It's from each of his haves to each of his needs
In small towns, in cities, all colors, all creeds
And mostly it's just kind of what people do
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Real Americans don't share your values, they're way more than able to live by their own
Real Americans don't worship Jesus, they worship who and whatever they want to, or don't
Conformsts and weirdos and losers and heroes, as good or as bad as their deeds
And most don't waste half a drop sweating what self-described Real Americans think they should be
My Lesbian Girlfriend
She draws all eyes upon each entrance to her belly-tees and leather pants
A genetic wonder – sorry, gents – you'll likely never touch
She's a vegan who eats bacon sometimes, prefers poetry that doesn't rhyme
I might dislike her if I didn't dig on her so much
But we've got a few things in common
Yeah, we both dig girls and booze and some nights
For lack options we have sex
And lest that seem confusing
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She's not my lesbian girlfriend
She's not my lesbian girlfriend
She's not my lesbian girlfriend
And she can't emphasize this enough
She hates sports, I liveblog Bulls games; she hates filth, I live in self-same
She digs Teagan and Sara where I'd rather shove chopsticks through my ears
She hates TV, I think cable is a human right; she can dance all night to technoshite
But we'd rather still be smashing Christian patriarchal financiers
And we both figure loving who you love
Is kind of key to being free
And if you see us making out at the end of the night
Just chill, it's an anomaly
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And yeah, maybe she should self-describe as queer or bi
But tell her that yourself because I'm kind trying to stay
On her good side
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Kickass Wake
The universe blinked in and out the other night
Leaving an empty cage in this cosmic zoo
His name was John, he was our friend, he lived his life until it ended way too
Soon, but that's way more than you walking corpses do
He was nothing special as he'd be the first to tell you
Decent job, a wife, a kid, all the stuff of tragedy
Seems life gives you all this shite to take it all back in the night
And there but for the whim of entropy go we
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Book the back room at McWether's, tell the band they're back together
There'll be kegs, yeggs and hookers, and no fucking clergy
Pomp and circumstance is for the fancypantses so we're throwing
The most kickass wake this burg'll ever see
Jesus and advertising teach us we're immortal if only we accessorize just so
But everyone you know is going to die and so will you so you should
Come out ot the wake and bring that hot chick from your co-op
The world is shit and run by cretins with more power than they deserve
Boosting the odds your dreams will calcify and crash
We're born and die by accident so drink and fuck and be a mensch
And remember John, who took a karmic bullet for your ass
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Book the backroom and McWether's, tell the band they're back together,
There'll be kegs, yeggs and hookers, and no fucking clergy
Death will find you either way, so live a life makes death a payoff at
The most kickass wake this burg'll ever see
Back Booth
The thoughts I'm thinking are for chumps
I'm too old to have them anyhow
God knows there's a billion things way more important in this world
Than the thought of you and me making out
In the back booth
Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't need much of your time
Much less the rest of our whole lives through
Just one more time or three I'd like to flee back to that old-man bar
And argue about nothing till I'm locking lips with you
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It all hit like a sonic boom
Our semi-private motel room
We might've not had sex but not for lack of trying
Tore at each other like wolverines
A time machine set on sixteen
Felt a lot like what one does in lieu of dying
In the back booth
Shoud've sat on the other side
Should've never gotten close enough to smell your hair
Should've wondered how your tongue got in my mouth
Instead of licking it while it was there
But you should go back to your life
It's so much better with you there
Where people make out with the people they're supposed to but for
Random moments of crazy
In which I'll gladly share
The back booth
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Go the Fuck Home, Mindy
Go the fuck home, Mindy, don't take that wrong, you're usually awesome company
Least till however much you drank
Go the fuck home, Mindy, no one here thinks the films of Wes Anderson
Are more than self-indulgent wank
Go the fuck home, Mindy, there's no point picking fights with the neighbor's dog
Your arguments leave him unfazed
Go the fuck home, Mindy, I know it's the pot calling the kettle drunk
But if the cops came you'd get tazed
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Go the fuck home, Mindy
What consciousness you have left seems strictly on loan
We love you and will tomorrow but tonight we've reached
The point of love's diminishing returns
So go the fuck home
Go the fuck home, Mindy, no one likes Ayn Rand who's not a sociopath
Right now you might be borderline
Go the fuck home, Mindy, I played “Fools Rush In” for you an hour ago
And you hit on Andy the whole time
We're not being ironic
We're not being ironic
We are in no way
Invoking irony
Go the fuck home, Mindy, you must be setting a record for non-sequiturs
Right now you might be borderline
Go the fuck home, Mindy, I wish there was a nicer way to say it that
We haven't already tried
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Enemy
Look at all those people out there in the cold
With a single voice like thunder from the skies
It's as if no one listened when they spoke in indoor voices
Like they lacked the graft or lobbyists to be heard otherwise
You call them malcontents and radicals and troublemaking scum
Who should just grow up and learn life isn't fair
Except they're mothers and they're fathers and they're students and they're workers
All with better things to do than ask for what's already theirs
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If your enemies are social workers, EMTs and file clerks
If your enemies are librarians and road crews
If your enemy is everyone who works every day instead of
Gaming debts and savings of people who do
If your enemies drive buses and plow frozen highways,
Fix bridges and make the cities run
If your enemies are firefighters, teachers and nurses
Your enemy is everyone
Look at all those people struggling to survive the toxic jungle
Your corporate lords have made of the Earth
They write your policies and ads, tell us fortune favors predators
Whom God chooses to dictate what our labor's worth
You call us parasites and looters and, god forbid, progressives, who should
learn our place and that life isn't fair yet
making life fair's kind of the point of a society
And maybe till it is we won't be going anywhere
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West Allis
Packed up his desk in a cardboard box
Maybe told em he’d send postcards from New Mexico
Eight years, same job, city payroll
Maybe someone said it was sad to see him go
Drove back to West Allis to the houses all in rows
Where days flit by like gray winter birds
And he forwarded his mail, paid the bills, took out the gun
And he went to a place where nothing hurts
Four years — unshoveled sidewalks and unmowed lawn
Four walls enclosing perfect desolation
Four years — you’d think someone might’ve noticed something gone
Four years of most mundane transmutation
Dust thou art
gone back unto the ashes of stars
Got a bachelor’s at UdubM,
Had a girlfriend and daughter but it didn’t last
Moved into his mom’s house when cancer crept in
Mortgage paid so he stayed there once she passed
But the neighbors all recall not much of him after that,
In to work and back but mostly sight unseen
What questions went unasked and chasms left unfilled
A bullet’s least one answer to everything
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I never knew him, but I guess nobody did, he made his
Choice, we make ours, the Earth endures
Maybe you’re your brother’s keeper not by code or creed or canon
But a simple hope that someone will be yours
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Four years — unshoveled sidewalks and unmowed lawn
Four walls enclosing perfect desolation
Four years — you’d think someone might’ve noticed something gone
Four years of most mundane transmutation
Dust thou art
gone back unto the ashes of stars
Dust thou art
going back unto the ashes of stars