Call It Music

One year after the death of Michael Jackson, here's a lyric for a new song that's a commentary on the sorry state of the recording industry today.

Call It Music

Get a synthesized drumbeat
Long wild hair
Slick vixen video
Get something there

Husky voiced baritone
Deep in feigned pain
Sounds just like angina
Sounds just like rain

It’s a business venture
A bankable kid
Good till thirty
Keep the skeletons hid
And call it music
And call it music

Automatic voice fix
Sellable smile
Big bold sponsor
Take us for miles

It’s a business venture
A bankable kid
Good till thirty
Keep the skeletons hid
And call it music
And call it music

Got a franchise coming
Posters and toys
First we take Montana
Then the girls and boys

It’s a business venture
A bankable kid
Good till thirty
Keep the skeletons hid
And call it music
And call it music

We need a cable channel
And a show for her
Fake some scandal
Create a stir

It’s a business venture
A bankable kid
Good till thirty
Keep the skeletons hid
And call it music
And call it music

Child

I would walk in your footsteps
Puppy at your feet
Smile your smiles
Light the people you meet

I would trace all your pictures
Study each line
Live in each story
Holding back time

But time has been subtle
It took me away
Caged me in darkness
While you breathe the day
I’m here in the moment
That hypnotized me
So all I can do
All I can do
Is love you

I would hold your hand gently
And walk on the shore
Then ride every wave
Till the ocean brings more

I would paint the horizon
And give it to you
Tangerine sunsets
On deep azure blue

But time has been subtle
It took me away
Caged me in darkness
While you breathe the day
I’m here in the moment
That paralyzed me
So all I can do
All I can do
Is love you

Nine Lives

I am not in a box
To be opened and eaten
A chocolate throwaway thing
Alive and attuned to all passions
I savor the end
Of the buy and discard
Way of life
And recycling the wrapper
Fails to salvage
My dreams for I am
Aware of my fate, Number Eight
This is the karma
Of all of my kind
We learn to love all
Who would hate

Airplane Down

Who was flying this plane
With its fuselage in the ocean
Black box in the clouds
Drunken pilots at sea
God warping the engines
With bird strikes and dirty bombs
Passengers with scrambled karmas
Trajectory downward
From Kitty Hawk to Duty-Free
Air traffic controllers
Lost in space
Reading tea leaves

Moon Landing

In Idaho’s backcountry
Of prairies and plains
Perfection kissed us from the sky

The greatest discovery
In the remotest of places
No angels, no stars, and no ore

The quartz and the crystal
Of pioneer roads
Danced into our antennae and hummed

We radioed home
They had found us at last
So why did the dawn have to come