Sea Shanty

The deck is heaving, I've let it drift,
I've caulked these planks just once too often.
The bilges leak and the cargo stinks
the sails are patched and the mizzen creaks.

The first mate glowers the crew in line.
The captain cries for the button boy aloft:
my legs shift fast on wet greased braces.
Quartermaster,rum!

I signed the "Kathleen and May"
in a New Yorker cartoon,
now my fingers scarred
and my teeth bled dry.

My whole life I've done
things for other people. In high
school I played football because my
old man expected me to. Then my
parents always figured I'd go to law
school, so I did. Football
scholarship. Phi Beta
Kappa--

California dreaming on such a winters day

Chicago, Chicago that toddling town.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, a helluva town.
The Bronx is up, but the Battery's down.
The people ride in a hole in the groun'.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK, it's a helluva town!

So, dear mother, NEW YORK NEW YORK
so good they named it twice , your eyes
two uneasy moons patrol my gestures
so I could return to that walled garden
where a tall solitary sunflower blooms.

But last year I went AWOL
left my wife,
and I just suddenly realized:
all my goals had been their
goals. And I hadn't been living my
own life. So I wanted something for
myself. Something that didn't
make any sense.

I've rolled and ignored
my blood brother.
I've chewed my haunches
to the white-bone edges

rewind, revert, hide-back
a winding Spanish windlass
spinning west by panic
in a mournful breeze.

But I've got me papers
'n' I've got me pay
Plymouth Ho! ladies
wait in line!

I'm a chameleon in a kaleidoscope:
I discard my hard crust as I thrash
I ring my brother
I tell my father I love him
I am walking 4-4 in search of festin
I am falling to the dance
I have a thousand promises of tenderness to give
I will do the average moon, I will not speak
than cu-nimb racing rain and power cuts
in the makeshift electrical veins of Cambridge.
A new boat waits for me down by the quay
La mer
Les a bercés
Le long des golfes clairs
Et d'une chanson d'amour
La mer
A bercé mon cœur pour la vie
and I ship tomorrow.
We've a cargo Murmansk bound.