Hope Chest

[ lyrics: natalie merchant/music: j.c.lombardo & robert buck ]



There was light and atomic fission
Swelling wind
Rising ash
Tide of black rain
Cement seared shawdow traces
Reminiscent of their last commands

Instantly one thousand flames arising
Ill scent the burning hides surrounding
A settlement debased entirely
Enola gay had made a casual delivery

Please build a future, darling
With our bomb
Cherish and love it
For the sake of
Earth bound kingdom come

The undersides of fallen metal trusses
Evil debris of human bodies
Each window's glass shards pelted
Secure confines
Brittle collapse

Neighbors lay beside
Each other unknowing
Faces scorched of all familiar bearing
Too few hands
Many wounds for closing
Marred by
Thirsting
Anguish
Fear lamenting

Here we stand
At the door to gold atomic age
Don't spoil your face with worry
Trust in
Earth bound kingdom come

[ lyrics: natalie merchant & j.c. lombardo/music: j.c. lombardo ]



Like a weasel in the clover
You tilt toss pop turn over
Sit down!
Tremble and weave like a moth
By flame deceived
Sit down!
Spill with your words caught up
Dance in your room
Slide like you're buttered up
Roll back the tomb
Sit down!

Bolt scuff jilt chase circle riddle
Shake in haste
Sit down!

When the thunderclouds sound
Ants scatter to high ground

[ music: john lombardo/lyric: john lombardo adapts wilfred owen ]



For whom the bells toll
When sentenced to die
The stuttering rifles
Will stifle the cry
The monstrous anger
The fear's rapid rattle
A desert inferno
Kids dying like cattle

Don't tell me
We're not prepared
I've seen today's marine
He's eighteen and he's eager
He can be quite mean

No mock'ries for them
No prayers or bells
The demented choirs
The wailing of shells
The boys holding candles
On untraveled roads
The fear spreads like fire
As shrapnel explodes

I think it's wrong
To conscript our youth
Against their will
When plenty of our citizenry
Really like to kill

What sign posts will lead
To armageddon's fires
What bugles will call them
From crowded grey shires
The women sit quiet
With death on their minds
A slow dusk descending
The drawing of blinds

Make the hunters all line up
It's their idea of fun
And let those be forgiven
Who never owned a gun
Was it him or me
Or the wailing of the dead
The laughing soldiers
Cast their lots
And you can cut the dread

[ music: dennis drew/lyric: natalie merchant ]



Science
Is truth for life
Watch religion fall obsolete
Science
Will be truth for life
Technology as nature
Science
Truth for life
In fortran tongue the
Answer

With wealth and prominence
Man so near perfection
Possession
It's an absence of interim
Secure no demurrer
Defense against divine
Defense against his true
Image
Human conflict number five
Discovery
Dissolved all illusion
Mystery
Destroyed with conclusion
And illusion never restored

Any modern man can see
That religion is
Obsolete

Piety
Obsolete
Ritual
Obsolete
Martyrdom
Obsolete
Prophetic vision
Obsolete
Mysticism
Obsolete
Commitment
Obsolete
Sacrament
Obsolete
Revelation
Obsolete

[ music: john lombardo/lyric: natalie merchant ]



Frail hinges pivot
On a cases door
Commemorative
Souvenirs from places
Containers change
With each occasion

Cellophane encased
Displaying paper
Certificate
Credit years of service
A tool of
Central enterprises

The early hope
For permanence the
Words the rings
Consistency
And social security the
Miracles high tragedy

A thought mistaken
For a memory
Clear the dust from
Smiles in boxes
Cross a patterned floor
Recall the voices

Local posts they
List your friends
In order of
Disappearance
Lawn scattered tins
Feed birds the
Portion baked for
Absent guests

Mass edition icon
God sent comfort is
Your salvation
But who grants
Absolution for sins
That never were committed

Tension
Makes a tangle
Of each thought becomes
Inconvenience
Sound never penetrate
As servile edges
Break and faint

Dress lenghts
Assassinations
Fractured family ties
Christenings

[ lyrics: natalie merchant/music: robert buck ]



Greta's cedar hope chest
Is full of pamphlets
Glass shelves of romantic vignettes
A journal laced with sedimentary prose

Norma gathers and collects vintage photoplays
Hair combs valentines

Lillian allows the animals to scratch
Leather crack
Mail collect in the box coatings peel

Agnes veiled cathedral dweller
Smiles with benevolent pain
It's katrina's fair tuesday morning
As she with caution unlatches the flat door
She alone cascades to the basement
Careful not to spoil her
Calico printed pinafore
Composite traits mannerists
All others dissipate

Margauritte vigilant dwells upon frigid casements

Sarah's thoughts in the velocity
Accusations always pierce and pass

Clara abandons her passions for distastes
Miss lenora p. sinclair
Early for coffee in the pool
"i'm resituating all your words"
Capital
Space
Colon
Paragraph

Sylvia keeps beasts in jars labeled
Kingdom phylum class order family genus species

[ lyrics: natalie merchant/music: dennis drew ]



Honor salute and speak
To the corner standing flag
Do you remember how the days of school were
Indivisible separate worlds
Compare contrast
These dreams absurd
Placid classroom faces
Breathe in the features
Of a demographics death map trilogy
Children read them well
Not to bury 3 of 4 sons
As the likes of chivalry
Not to take 6 of 30 bills
To manufacture corpus christi
And so you think it can be so serene
History's most intolerable famine
Has clutched our global tranquility
Reaped the lives of children
Maladies collaborate
With cyclic despair
Infanticide clamors to 20 times more
In 4th and 5th worlds
The poor have always been
Beside us
Amid us
Death has always been
As million cease 15 million that's an annual reap
Add divide multiply sum 41 thousand!