Hope Chest

[ lyrics: wilfred owen/music: j.c. lombardo ]



Bent double like old beggars in sacks
Knockkneed and cursing or coughing like hags
Men marched on sleeping some without boots
Fatigue drunken deaf still to the hoots
Of breaking gas shells
Dropping softly behind
But limped on bloodshod
All went lame all went blind

Gas gas quick boys fumbling helmets in time
Someone still screaming a man in fire or lime
Under a grey cloud dim dark through green light
In all my dreaming before my helpless sight
He plunges at me
Choking guttering drowning
Put in a wagon he had to keep pace
As his eyes melt to his face

If you could hear blood
Gurgling from ruptured lungs
If you could witness
Vile sores on innocent tongues
You would not tell me
Not with such pride and such zest
The lies of history
Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori
Some desperate glory
Pro patria mori
As witness disturbs the story
Pro patria mori
Stand firm boys breathe the glory

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



She borders the pavement
Flanks avenues
Parades pass white glove attended by
My mother the war

She'll raise a shaft
Lift a banner
Toss a rose
My mother the war

She's made every effort
To salvage the few
Bought fourteen liberty bonds
My mother the war

Mother the war

She knows every neighbor
Chats at their doors
Compare econosize electric appliances
My mother the war

Share tea and a seat
By my cradle with
My mother the war

Mother the war

Caressing the globe
Touch on his isle
She wrings hands in pensive waiting
My mother the war

Haunts her doorway
Begs her postman
Is there word for
My mother the war

Momentos of distant vigil
Three years each tour
"hands of god enfold him" prayed
My mother the war

Mother the war

In bitter defiance
She's spitting the corps
She's wet a brood short league for combat
My mother the war

Well acquainted with sorrow
Left millions in grief
My mother the war

Fold
Laced
Carrion
Blood
Soaked
Robes

Mother the war

[ music: john lombardo/lyric: natalie merchant ]



Lineage closed
Dissolved
In its birth
Tragedy
Prelude a balance
Is a synergy
Of reason
Malicious hope
As techno atrocities
Lapse their effects
Associate these ends
Their clarity
Demands your revenge
Please compensate
Not deny

Jungle revenge
Infanticide
Crosses
Very thin walls
Latent casualties
Arrive
From fatal initiation
No longer recessive
Genetic aliens abandoned
Plain deceit
In the mirage of
A just one time cause
We'd all changed
The clocks

No ladies auxiliary to kiss
Their blistered cheeks
Gone

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



There were women holding rosaries
On the day manolete died
Teenage girls in soft white dresses
Standing silent peace respecting
Groups of boys held in their hands
The fragments of a shattered idol
The old men with their traditions challenged
Refrained from tears

Neck neck hook
Poles of wood
The picadores stood eyes ablaze
To view brutal contest
In the vale of years

Courage unfailing
Agility exhausted
Youth entered challenge
Reached for title shelved

Patrons in attendance
To disarm a common myth
Homage played to the victor of immortality
Cloaked in bold tones

In the stockyard the beasts
Did climb their barriers
Bid by a frenzied ring

Bred for one purpose only
To die in man's sport
Dash against his spindle

An instant fell to wounding
On the day
Swords penetrating
On the day
Torches igniting
On the day
Flower wreaths encircling
The day
On the day

[ 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: steve gustafson ]



In the cruel garrison of affection
If worth of lore is true
You know the face of a temptress
Pit viper

A witch or enchantress
Pit viper

With the malign venom of conceit
She tries
Civil men
Conceal fear
Misgivings
When night entreats them
A greater chill sustains
Stains her
Darkness
Shall not inhibit death blow

Know this skin does not restrict her
Tear and shed the coil
Fall of garland leaves
Below the soil

[ lombardo/merchant ]



Oh my dear friend
My dear friend giorgio
How has this time breton
Discouraged your liaison with the
Eye styled metaphysical
Incongruous scenarios
Dauntly jaunt about through nostalgic despair
Within childlike renderings
Of a nightmarish recall
"all my images fragments
I've shored upon my ruins
Pictor classicus sum
I am pure"
Step solemn with the
Air of reluctant manes
As rod and hoop shadow children
Scatter through a henna arcade
Figures indentured to a windless landscape
Enduring silence and flame
Da da da
No loyalty to the nonsensical
Scorned their nihilist pageantry