"rock 'n roll patriot"

"rock 'n roll patriot"
done differently by jake kilroy.

oh, so your jukebox wires are lighting up the walls,
calling fire in a crowded room
and crowding the death toll gloom.

what'd you want from rock 'n roll anyway?
guitars as dull as butter knives
or too sharp to handle?

one breath and music was fucked.

get the machines.
grease 'em up.
let 'em loose.
and then wait to be a critic,
sharpening the pen,
slumped in the back,
stabbed in the front.

you see,
there's a wicked world out there,
filled with demons and one-liners.
so let's stay rotten, just to blend in.
keep just one long drive home from the gun,
edging near a freedom we can't spell.
burning alive at the stake,
laughing up blues songs
and coughing up blood.

this isn't the riot you thought.
nope.
no goddamn way.
this is a poet urinating on the tombstone of e.e. cummings.
this is the last speech of someone with nothing to say.

quiet now, in the dark glow of a hallowed-out tomb.
call it a bedroom.
call it a sanctuary.
call it the last stop before sleep.

slumber ain't rest.
and dreams are not sleep.

i hear the tossing and turning
wind-up heartache of a man in the other room.
someone flooded him with liquor.
and the levies broke.
and his city drowned.
and he made it far enough
to think he had gone somewhere.

he whistles softly in his cheap bed,
the crackle of his fingertips not snapping,
his grin as rough and sacred as a diamond,
to the wrong people
and always the wrong people.
after midnight, it's all one long slide,
cutting through the bones of the world.

land loudly and keep quiet.
pray wrong and worship heavy.
let's pay the devil blood money
to hear him sing a dying man's song.
i bet his voice sounds like a grave
or the lone clap in a jail cell.
but leave god out of it all this night,
'cause god's probably never broken
a single finger on an old guitar.