NOTHING IS SAFE (new lyric)

I’ve been watching you
You heard some old codger say
"Play it safe and later you’ll be grateful."
So, here’s your talkin’ to:
If your last meal was today
Would you go half-starved and leave a plateful?

So if you’re hungry
You better dig right in
Feelin’ punchy?
Then take it on the chin

Nothing is safe
Nothing alive is safe
You better get it in your head
Nothing is safe
Nothing alive is safe
Coz safe, my friend,
Is just another word for dead

My big job interview
It was all 401K
Sick leave, holidays
And health insurance
The future was secure
Till I fell right through my chair
Down the stairs
And landed on the cactus plants

When stargazin’
Gaze with all your might
Stars a-blazin’
Could burn out tonight

(Repeat Chorus)

George and Lois Lane
Had a brand new baby girl
And suddenly the world
Was much too risky
Child-proofed everything
Covered everything with nerf
When she grew up
She was nearly sixty

When she was dyin’
Angels took her home
Took her flyin’
Through a combat zone

(Repeat Chorus)

Shake your head at me
Till you give your neck a cramp
The night is dark and damp
And I’m out in it
There may be enemies
May be thieves or even worse
Take my life and purse
But curse the limits

Look around you
You’re in prison, friend
What surrounds you
Only locks you in

(Repeat Chorus)

Another New-ish Lyric

World Don't Owe Me Nothin'
(for Honeyboy Edwards)

Chorus: (Repeated after every verse)
Well, this old world don't owe me nothin'
Of its treasures or its treats
I done emptied out the stuffin'
I done swallowed all the sweets
Best believe that I ain't bluffin'
When you're thumbin' through my book
Coz this old world don't owe me nothin'
That I ain't already took

I was born in Mississippi
'Twixt the river and East hills
With the cotton, corn, and whiskey
From them old white liquor stills
'Till the flood of twenty-seven
Tore the levee land apart
Took my mama's unborn baby
Overflowed and choked her heart

Lord, they love to get the young'uns
Squirmin' on the mourner's bench
While the preacher shout damnation
'Till you smell that sulfur stench
Preachers, they ain't good for nothin'
Like musicians, only worse
They just eat up all your chicken
And make eyes at all the girls

Papa was a poor sharecropper
Can't make proper when you're black
Share the harvest with the bossman
But he don't share nothin' back
You can starve yourself all summer
'Till the harvest cut and sold
Boss say, "Pretty good, ol' darkey.
You just two hundred dollars in the hole!"

Mama used to play the guitar
Lay it down across her knee
With a blade between her fingers
She could slide on Par-a-lee
I got mine from Sears and Robuck
And I kept it in my hands
'Till the blues become my good luck
And I seen the Promised Land

Now, I done played with Big Joe Williams
And I played with Sleepy John
Even played with Robert Johnson
All them cats long dead and gone
And I had my share of women
Two or three girls at a time
And I drunk a Mississippi's
Worth of liquor, beer, and wine

When I'm dead and six foot under
I won't need no marble throne
Tell that rich man over yonder
I got wealth he's never known
Music, family, fun, and lovin'
Life is like a table spread
No this old world don't owe me nothin'
Cash my chips in, Great Lordy Lord, I'm dead!

Enter the Mystery with Eyes Wide

Welcome to my blog.

If it had to be like other blogs, I would now write:
And don't let the URL hit you on the way out.

But I've decided instead to let this be a sort of cave where my sacred sketches are lit by the profane flame of conscious artifice.

What does that mean?

It means I won't bore you with the details of my daily existence. I will try to make this a banquet table of only rare offerings. I won't spell out my opinions for you, or belabor the facts of my checkered past. Instead, there will be gently gleaming clues embedded in stories, and in lyrics.

In fact, I've been using such a system for a long time, and think I've become adept at it. Just as Da Vinci may have encoded certain secrets in his paintings, my entire history, all my passions and concerns, my darkest secrets and most vulnerable, ineffable hopes, are already there -- embedded in lyrics and in stories.

We are all initiates of this mystery religion together. And all but the most stubbornly blind and jaded acolytes of utilitarian science must agree that there exists in us a sacred impulse. A woman in a check-out line says that she is wearing the beautiful scarf you just complimented to hide her hairless scalp, and begins to share her experience with chemotherapy. What is your impulse? To run and hide? To will your pager to beep? I think those are mere reactions to the real impulse. The real impulse -- be still and listen to it! -- is to reach out to her. Physically? Yes, initially. But really, the impulse is to impart a sort of healing through touch. Not an instantaneous healing, as in the Jesus miracle stories, but the beginning of one. Healing is available to everybody, but requires interaction, touch, hearing, and time. And what we run from, I think, is the time commitment, and the fear that rather than becoming a healing force, we will absorb the illness ourselves, or the fatigue that goes with it.

I don't believe in any of the creation myths as stated in any of the sacred texts. But I have been listening to an energy that only really flows when two or more are gathered together to achieve a higher, humane end.

So, I won't preach. I'm not qualified. But I just want to cue you in to the fact that many such ideas, and hidden agendas, and less lofty secrets, are and will continue to be embedded in my stories and songs.

I invite you all to respond by email to what you discover here.

Your Servant in Song...

THE PREACHER'S WIFE

Oh, the preacher's wife, she's a skinny little thing (Oh my, oh my)
Taught me how to play and sing (Oh my)
But I never meant, upon my life (Oh my, oh my)
To fall in love with the preacher's wife

Oh, the preacher, he's a favored man
Well beloved and in demand
Spreads himself so far and wide
Ain't nothin' left to give his bride

I used to jack the Northern Pine
Up the Minnesota line
But I quit that vicious timber trade
I take odd jobs and I make odd pay

Come a drizzlin' September dawn
I'se tryin' to mow the wet church lawn
She said, "Come in out of the rain."
Lord, did she know what she was sayin'?

We sat so bashful and so still
Rain hissin' on the windowsill
Till she took this guitar from the wall
'Twas then that I began to fall

Oh, she taught me how to pick and sing
Through winter into early spring
With her nimble, knowin' hands on mine
Our fingers daily did entwine

In a small town, you know how it goes
You fall down, everybody knows
And the fastest rumors to get out
Are for things nobody talks about

So, the preacher's wife soon felt the sting
Of silence that says everything
Of sharp helloes and short replies
Of whispers and accusing eyes

And when she staggered from the weight
Of waggin' tongues and naggin' hate
She called our lessons to an end
And bade me never come again

He woke me in the still of night
The preacher in the pale moonlight
Says he, "The one we love has fled.
And I despair that she is dead."

Down in a cavern, deep and cold
They found her wedding ring I'm told
But nothing more was ever found
I'm sure she quit this dreadful town

Then, while the shepherd and his flock
Were searchin' blindly in their shock
I stole this guitar from the church
And set out on my private search

From town to town, I play for tips
In taverns and on gamblin' ships
I seek her face both near and far
And fill each song with love for her

Oh, the preacher's wife was a skinny little thing
Taught me how to play and sing
But I never meant, upon my life
To fall in love with the preacher's wife.

Copyright 2005, Ragamuffin Music

Jack with bandmate Stacy Mates