/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.2624238]

ITT: Songs that have the lyrical potential to be poetry

I'll start: Orange Claw Hammer by Captain Beefheart

Thick cloud caught
a Piper Cub's tail
A match struck blue
on a railroad rail
The old puff horse
was just pullin' thru
'N uh' man wore
a peg-leg, forever
I'm on the bum
where the hobos run
The air breaks
with filthy chatter
Oh, I don't care
there's no place there
I don't think
it even matters
My skin's blazin' thru
an' my clothes, in tatters
An' the railroad looked like a 'Y'
up the hill, of ladders
One shoe fell on the gravel
one stick poked down
An' grey of age fell down
on a pair of ears
An eagle shined thru my hole
...watch-pocket
Gingham girl, baby girl
passed me by, in tears
An' a jack rabbit raised
his folded ears
A beautiful, sage-brush
...Jack rabbit
An' an oriole sang like an orange
his breast full o' worms
An' his tail clawed the evenin'
like a hammer-rrrrr...
An' his wings took t' air
like a bomber-rrrrr!...
My rain-can caught me
a cup o' water-rrrrr...
When I got into town
odd jobs Mam?
Aaahhhhhh!
your horse, I'll fodder
I'm the round-house man
I once... was ya' father
Little up t' road
a candy-striped barber pole
An' above it read a sign,
'Painless Parker-rrrrr'...
Licorice twisted around,
under a fly
An' a youngster
cocked her eye
God! Before me,
if I'm not crazy?...
Is my
daughter-rrrrr...
Come, little one,
with yer little
Dimpled fingers,
gimme one
An' I'll buy you...uhhh...
a cherry phosphate
(1/2)

[Anonymous No.2624241]

Part 2

Take you down t' the foamin'
brine 'n water-rrrrr...
An' show you the wooden tits!
on the Goddess!
With the pole out...
...full sail!...
That tempted away
ya' peg-legged father
I was shanghied
by a high-hat,
Beaver-moustache man...
an' his pirate friend
I woke up in vomit 'n beer
in a banana bin
An' a soft lass
with brown skin...
Bore me seven babies
with snappin black eyes
An' beautiful
ebony skin
An' here it is, I'm with you,
my daughter-rrrrr...
Thirty years away
can make a seaman's eyes...
A round-house man's eyes...
...flow out!...
Salt water-rrrrr!...

[Anonymous No.2624249]

La-hove love, (clap) la-ha-hooove ...
Love, American style, truer than the red white and blue
Love, American style, that's me and you


And on a star-spangled night my love (my love come to me)
You can rest your head on my shoulder
Out by the dawn's early light, my love (I will defend)
I will defend your right to try (I’ll defend your right to)


Love, American style, free'r than the land of the free
Love, American style, that's you and me


We pledge our love ‘neath the same old moon (but it shines)
But it shines red, white and blue, now
Upon this land of hopes and dreams, my love (all that I hope)
Where all I hope for 'tis of thee (all I hope for 'tis of)


Love, American style, truer than the red, white and blue
Love, American style, that's me and you


Upon this land of hopes and dreams my love
Where all I hope for 'tis of thee (love-love-love-CLAP-love-love-love)


Love, American style, free'r than the land of the free
Love, American style, truer than the red, white and blue
Love, American Style, that's me and you!

[Anonymous No.2624253]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH6b_lSQst0

This song and video will change your life.

[Anonymous No.2624259]

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again

Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need...of some...stranger's hand
In a...desperate land

Lost in a Roman...wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah

There's danger on the edge of town
Ride the King's highway, baby
Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway west, baby

Ride the snake, ride the snake
To the lake, the ancient lake, baby
The snake is long, seven miles
Ride the snake...he's old, and his skin is cold

The west is the best
The west is the best
Get here, and we'll do the rest

The blue bus is callin' us
The blue bus is callin' us
Driver, where you taken' us

The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived, and...then he
Paid a visit to his brother, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door...and he looked inside
Father, yes son, I want to kill you
Mother...I want to...fuck you

C'mon baby, take a chance with us
C'mon baby, take a chance with us
C'mon baby, take a chance with us
And meet me at the back of the blue bus
Doin' a blue rock
On a blue bus
Doin' a blue rock
C'mon, yeah

Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

It hurts to set you free
But you'll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die

This is the end

[Anonymous No.2624269]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uny3pYb1fsI

I thought I'd take a walk today
It's a mistake I sometimes make
My children lay asleep in bed
My wife lay wide-awake
I kissed her softly on the brow
I tried not to make a sound
But with stony eyes she looked at me
And gently squeezed my hand
Call it a premonition, call it a crazy vision
Call it intuition, something learned from mother
But when she looked up at me, I could clearly see
The Sword of Damocles hanging directly above her
Oh Lord Oh my Lord
Oh Lord
How have I offended thee?
Wrap your tender arms around me
Oh Lord Oh Lord
Oh My Lord...

http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/3530822107858572857/

[Anonymous No.2624283]

Death will be unlike the night-times when we lie awake thinking of death
Death will be unlike the Spanish maracas that rattle inside your last breath
Death will be unlike the Mexican festivals, skeletons wearing top hats
Death will be unlike the brownstone apartments that dynamite or dereliction collapse
Death will be unlike the mandolin the hangman relaxes by playing
Death will be unlike the Hound of the Baskervilles, chilling the moors with its baying
Death will be unlike the British museum, its bodies from peat bogs and bones
Death will be unlike the curse of the mummy that turns the explorers to stone
Death will be unlike the great roller coaster, a plunge from a boast to a scream
Death will be unlike mahogany coffins great pianists play in their wildest strangest dreams
Death will be unlike a garden in autumn where poets can sit and compose
Death will be unlike the granite memorials where memories wither in rows
Death will be unlike the charge of the Light Brigade Alfred Lord Tennyson rhymed
Death will be unlike the thin piece of paper that Reagan and Gorbachov sign
Death will be unlike the hospital bedside with Novocain needles and cards
Death will be unlike the great day of judgement when God the headmaster presents the awards
Death will be unlike the marriage that bickers 'til death us do part
Death will be unlike the dreams of the young man who sang 'Love will tear us apart'
Death will be unlike TV documentaries showing us life from outside
Death will be unlike the Buddhist nirvana the moth seems to seek in the light
Death will be unlike the Cities of crystal they build in a few grains of smack
Death will be unlike the long picture window the coffin looks through to a widow in black
Death will be unlike a room full of spiders all clinging together and crying
Death will be unlike the wedding guest's story, the ship drifting lost and the dead sailors sighing
(continued)

[Anonymous No.2624286]

cant use captain beefheart. that song IS poetry stoopid

[Anonymous No.2624288]

>>2624283
Death will be unlike the din in the steeple when cholera poisons the village
Death will be unlike the illumination that Tolstoy provided for poor Ivan Illych
Death will be unlike the wrinkling sea children glimpse through the chinks in the boardwalk
Death will be unlike the magical land of 'The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe'
Death will be unlike the treacherous virus that murders the lovers with AIDS
Death will be unlike the phantoms of freedom that lead the crowd over the barricades
Death will be unlike the night thoughts of 'Late Call' when ministers stop being cosy
Death will be unlike 'The Pit and the Pendulum' co-starring Bela Lugosi
Death will be unlike the bulge of the mouse inside the boa constrictor
Death will be unlike that drunkard the phoenix, so tight on the moonshine of golden elixirs
Death will be unlike that violent pornography, dear to the Marquis de Sade
Death will be unlike the last stitch of clothing the stripper discards as her nipples grow hard
Death will be unlike the bankrupt, handing over the keys to his house
Death will be unlike the last day of summer, when insects grow stupid and swallows fly south
Death will be unlike the skull of a merchant that slants through the portrait by Holbein
Death will be unlike that strange proposition on silence, the Tractatus of Wittgenstein
Death will be unlike your holiday snaps when the camera lets in the light
Death will be unlike the honest-but-cold-blooded bank clerk whose hobby is homocide
Death will be unlike the hands of the clock, coming together at midnight
Death will be unlike the grim amputations of medical students larking on rag night
Death will be unlike the hijacker's voice in the heads of air traffic controllers
Death will be unlike the sea as it thunders on Liv Ullman vanishing under the rollers
(continued)

[Anonymous No.2624298]

Bob Dylan - Only a Pawn in their game

A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers' blood
A finger fired the trigger to his name
A handle hid out in the dark
A hand set the spark
Two eyes took the aim
Behind a man's brain
But he can't be blamed
He's only a pawn in their game.

A South politician preaches to the poor white man
"You got more than blacks, don't complain
You're better than them, you been born with white skin" they explain
And the Negro's name
Is used it is plain
For the politician's gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.

The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the governors get paid
And the marshals and cops get the same
But the poor white man's used in the hands of them all like a tool
He's taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
'Bout the shape that he's in
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.

From the powerty shacks, he looks from the cracks to the tracks
And the hoof beats pound in his brain
And he's taught how to walk in a pack
Shoot in the back
With his fist in a clinch
To hang and to lynch
To hide 'neath the hood
To kill with no pain
Like a dog on a chain
He ain't got no name
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.

Today, Medgar Evers was buried from the bullet he caught
They lowered him down as a king
But when the shadowy sun sets on the one
That fired the gun
He'll see by his grave
On the stone that remains
Carved next to his name
His epitaph plain:
Only a pawn in their game.

[Anonymous No.2624297]

>>2624288
Death will be unlike the abbey the pilgrims all saw when they prayed
Death will be unlike the unholy land at the end of the Children's Crusade
Death will be unlike the hell in Huis Clos Mr Sartre informs is just other people
Death will be unlike the travelling salesman who woke up one morning transformed to a beetle
Death will be unlike 2001, the room at the end of the ride
Death will be unlike the wrath that Charles Bronson let loose on the Lower East Side
Death will be unlike the House of the Shades the dog Cerberus guarded for Hades his master
And death will be unlike that lesson on Infallibility, the Chernobyl disaster
And death will be unlike the empty career of the temp's vacillations gone permanent
Death will be unlike the unlucky omens the clairvoyant reads in the meaningless firmament
In the meaningless firmament

What will death (what will death)
Be like? (be like?)

What will death (what will death)
Be like? (be like?)

Death will be like -

[Anonymous No.2624295]

Oh, where is your inflammatory writ?
Your text that would incite a light, "Be lit"?
Our music deserving devotion unswerving--
Cry "Do I deserve her?" with unflagging fervor.
(Well, no we do not, if we cannot get over it)

But what's it mean
when suddenly we're spent?
Tell me true
ambition came and reared its head, and went
far from you!
Even mollusks have weddings,
though solemn and leaden
but you dirge for the dead,
and take no jam on your bread--
just a supper of salt and a waltz
through your empty bed.

And all at once it came to me,
and I wrote him hunched 'till four-thirty
But that vestal light,
it burns out with the night
in spite of all the time that we spend on it:
on one bedraggled ghost of a sonnet!
While outside, the wild boars root
without bending a bough underfoot--
O it breaks my heart; I don't know how they do't.
So don't ask me!

And as for my inflammatory writ?
Well, I wrote it and I was not inflamed one bit.
Advice from the master derailed that disaster;
He said "Hand that pen over to me, poetaster!"
While across the great plains,
keening lovely & awful,
ululate the lost Great American Novels--
An unlawful lot, left to stutter and freeze, floodlit.
(But at least they didn't run,
to their undying credit.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO84LE36kp8

[Anonymous No.2624305]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZkofA_TWVw

[debiru cutta !iMAOrZO0y2 No.2624308]

how about this pregnant kernel of a Leonard Cohen song

It's true that all the men you knew were dealers
who said they were through with dealing
Every time you gave them shelter
I know that kind of man
It's hard to hold the hand of anyone
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender.

And then sweeping up the jokers that he left behind
you find he did not leave you very much not even laughter
Like any dealer he was watching for the card
that is so high and wild
he'll never need to deal another
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger.

And then leaning on your window sill
he'll say one day you caused his will
to weaken with your love and warmth and shelter
And then taking from his wallet
an old schedule of trains, he'll say
I told you when I came I was a stranger
I told you when I came I was a stranger.
...
Well, I've been waiting, I was sure
we'd meet between the trains we're waiting for
I think it's time to board another
Please understand, I never had a secret chart
to get me to the heart of this
or any other matter
When he talks like this
you don't know what he's after
When he speaks like this,
you don't know what he's after.

Let's meet tomorrow if you choose
upon the shore, beneath the bridge
that they are building on some endless river
Then he leaves the platform
for the sleeping car that's warm
You realize, he's only advertising one more shelter
And it comes to you, he never was a stranger
And you say ok the bridge or someplace later.


And leaning on your window sill ...
I told you when I came I was a stranger.

[Anonymous No.2624317]

Say Jasper, 'taint no use
talking, even though you talk from now 'til noon
Don't try to tell me, Mr. Know-It-All, a coon is up in the moon!
Why, a nigger, with his brown figure
certainly darkens up the silvery moon
Wake up! You're dreaming with your eyes aglare
You great big foolish coon!
If the man in the moon were a
coon, coon, coon
What would you do?
He would fade with his shade
the silvery moon, moon, moon
away from you
No roaming 'round the park at night
No spooning in the bright moonlight
If the man in the moon were a coon, coon, coon
Most everyone has heard
stories that a chicken am a coon's delight
Just think the dangers to a hen roost
with that good old moon out of sight
Indeed chicken would be
soft pickin' if the man up in the moon were black
Oh my! The harvest for that darkey
with that great big sack on his back
If the man in the moon were a
coon, coon, coon
What would you do?
He would fade with his shade
the silvery moon, moon, moon
away from you
No roaming 'round the park at night
No spooning in the bright moonlight
If the man in the moon were a coon, coon, coon

[Anonymous No.2624356]

>here's one by The National, I had trouble picking

I think the kids are in trouble
Do not know what all the troubles are for
Give them ice for their fevers
You're the only thing I ever want anymore
We live on coffee and flowers
Try not to wonder what the weather will be
I figured out what we're missing
I tell you miserable things after you are asleep

Now we'll leave the silver city 'cause all the silver girls
Gave us black dreams
Leave the silver city 'cause all the silver girls
Everything means everything

It's a Hollywood summer
You'll never believe the shitty thoughts I think
Meet our friends out for dinner
When I said what I said I didn't mean anything
We belong in a movie
Try to hold it together 'til our friends are gone
We should swim in a fountain
Do not want to disappoint anyone

Now we'll leave the silver city 'cause all the silver girls
Gave us black dreams
Leave the silver city to all the silver girls
Everything means everything

I was afraid I'd eat your brains
I was afraid I'd eat your brains
'Cause I'm evil
'Cause I'm evil

I'm a confident liar
Have my head in the oven so you know where I'll be
I'll try to be more romantic
I want to believe in everything you believe
I was less than amazing
Do not know what all the troubles are for
Fall asleep in your branches
You're the only thing I ever want anymore

Now we'll leave the silver city 'cause all the silver girls
Gave us black dreams
Leave the silver city to all the silver girls
Everything means everything

I was afraid I'd eat your brains
I was afraid I'd eat your brains
'Cause I'm evil
'Cause I'm evil
'Cause I'm evil

[Anonymous No.2624410]

>>2624317

> Most everyone has heard
stories that a chicken am a coon's delight

This would be great put over a hip hop beat.

[Anonymous No.2624517]

Pretty much anything by Astronautalis

>Contrails ft. Tegan Quin

She always made the best of deaf and blind,
Fashionable dress of canes and signs.
Tracing their apparel, like a judge of character in braile,
She never missed a lift, a bump, or line
But fingertips will drift and miss blip from time to time.
This is how we find secrets that slipped our gip,
Over wit and charm on whispered breath,
Frantically fishing for familiarness on fingertips.
This is just, shit what is this, this is redress.

I know her cane is just a comedy.
Tin cups a crutch for crippled honesty.
Her slain perception, a lame deception.
What's astonishing we bought it see.
Every Harry, Dick, and Tom left her very
Fickle arms palming a broken promise ring.
You follow me? 100 strong men choked on the bit,
While the blind bride guides the bridle toward the abyss.
And this can only end wrong but motherfuck it,
That's the reason why I wrote this song.

[Anonymous No.2624520]

IT WAS ALL A DREAM
I USED TO READ WORD UP MAGAZINE

Gets me everytime.

[Anonymous No.2624579]

This is a song for Carol
Your into Japanese fastfood
And I drop you off with your Japanese lover
And you're going to the beach all day
You're so pretty when you're unfaithful to me
You're so pretty when you're unfaithful to me

You're looking like
You've got some sun
Your blistered lips
Have got a kiss
The days are lit like everyone
Uh-oh, Uh-oh, Uh-oh, Uh-oh

Your bones got a little machine
You're the bone machine

I was talking to preachy-preach about kissy-kiss
He bought me a soda
He bought me a soda
He bought me a soda and he tried to molest me in the parking lot
Yep, yep yep YEP!

I make you break
You make me hard
Your Irish skin *
Looks Mexican
Our love is rice and beans and horses lard
Your bones got a little machine
You're the bone machine

Uh-oh, Uh-oh, Uh-oh, Uh-oh
Uh-oh, Uh-oh, Uh-oh, Uh-oh

[Anonymous No.2624670]

blistering Pree
all smiling and swollen makes
babies to breathe
with their hearts hanging open and
all of the sheets, as soft as beets in some brown dresser drawer

and with bees in her breath
and the rest of her ringing will
sing through her chest
with a force hard and beating til
wonderflee wet
she will get until she's soaked inside her clothes
and there is no sorry, to be sorry for

[Anonymous No.2624690]

The boy was in the hallway drinking a glass of tea
From the other end of the hallway a rhythm was generating
Another boy was sliding up the hallway
He merged perfectly with the hallway,
He merged perfectly, the mirror in the hallway

The boy looked at johnny, johnny wanted to run,
But the movie kept moving as planned
The boy took johnny, he pushed him against the locker,
He drove it in, he drove it home, he drove it deep in johnny
The boy disappeared, johnny fell on his knees,
Started crashing his head against the locker,
Started crashing his head against the locker,
Started laughing hysterically

When suddenly johnny gets the feeling he's being surrounded by
Horses, horses, horses, horses
Coming in in all directions
White shining silver studs with their nose in flames,
He saw horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses, horses.

...
Johnny's laying there, his sperm coffin
Angel looks down at him and says, “oh, pretty boy,
Can't you show me nothing but surrender ? ”