Category: verse

“Shabby Tricks”   23 August 1985
Shabby tricks!
You always pull such stinking shabby tricks!
You’re always getting yourself in a fix!
Down a ditch!
Up a crick without a paddle and you pull us in with shabby tricks!
You really are a foul disgrace!
You’re really in disfavor, ‘cause we hate the flavor,
Of your dirty lowdown shabby tricks!

“With the Hair and the Music” 14 January 1994
What’s the matter with kids these days?
Goin’ through life in a smoky haze?
Why do they think that violence pays?
What kind of monsters did we raise?
With the guns and the drugs and the hair and the music!

“Oldie, the round-Heeled Spice Girl” w/ Robi Jo &al (1 March 2000)

Well you know
Ginger, and Baby, and Sporty, and Scary,
Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Posh and Rosemary!
But do you recall,
The most ancient Spice Girl of all!

Hello my name is Old Spice,
And I wear the lamest clothes.
My legs are veined and wrinkly,
And I don’t wear pantyhose.
All of the other Spice Girls
Put out for the football team.
They just will not believe that
I was once their Pops’ wet dream.

When Versace hosts a ball,
We’ll show up to play!
When that party starts to stall
Then we’re on our way!
If you wanna be my lover,
Ya gotta get up with my friends.
But if you think it’s too much bother,
Then you can just kiss our rear ends!

“Capitol Hill” (28 December 2002)
(meter stolen from Sherwood Schwartz)

Just vote for me and I’ll bring home pork from Washington DC.
We’ll soak the other taxpayers, but you’ll get yours for free.
We’ll build you a mighty welfare state, and it will be your slave,
Offering full coverage from the cradle to the grave
(The cradle to the grave…)

We’ll regulate small businesses, we’ll tie them up in knots.
If not for the vigor of the working class, the budget would be shot.
(The budget would be shot…)

When things turn sour we’ll duck the blame,
You cannot pin us down.
Not two Senators, your Congressman (doodle-oodle-oot-doo)
The President, or his Vice (waa waa waaah)
His Cabinet, the Supreme Court, or the Pentagon!
What a slick bunch of lice!

(intermezzo)

So, that’s the way the system works, we’ll rob the country blind.
And blame each other’s party, you’ll buy it every time.
The Donkey and the Elephant will patronize the pest
Who whimpers for free goodies from the public treasure chest.
“New roads! Food stamps! More benefits! Not a single user fee!”
Don’t call it “Socialism”, we say “Democracy!”

So watch the action on the floor, it’s sure to make you ill.
Those lying scheming Congressmen, there on Capitol Hill!

“Don’t Touch My Junk” (w/ John Tyner, 23 November 2010)

I’m not a fan of your scans, but without help from God above,
You won’t touch my junk…
I wanna fly through the skies without fear of harrassment,
And no I’m not impressed with yer professional detachment,
Yer gropin’ up my thigh provokes a natural reaction,
Don’t touch my junk!

I want to fly to the west when my trip commences,
With my self respect and my common senses,
(You don’t need to know if I am on my menses),
Don’t want irradiated and don’t want molested,
Don’t touch my junk!

I think them porno portals are carcinogenic,
The latex on yer fist don’t make you a medic,
So git yer mitts off of my sweet stuff,
You’re givin’ me a headache,
Don’t touch my junk!

“Fake News” (2 September 2018)
“Week fans’ swank fee wakes fen, knew safe, kens a few.” — N.E. Fawkes

“Media Madness” (28 November 2018)
(meter stolen from Graham Nash)

In a cloistered room in Congress,
Under wraps so the world can’t see,
The President is hobbled,
In the name of “Democracy!”

Mueller-Trump Madness is thrilling the country!
It’s partisan hack work! It’s Dems on a spree!

Did Putin hack Her e-mails?
Did Assange let the truth get free?
Will schemers share the details,
For suborning perjury?

Manafort Madness is filling my country
With shock and amusement, free of dignity!

“Wood Bits”     26 March 2019
Hoo Ray for Wally Wood!
Big-breasted women never looked so good!
The way he’d draw a damsel in distress
Without a dress!
In pen and ink his work was…
Undeniably the best!

“Dear Diary” (25 May 2019)
Did ya rare airy dread dry ear aid? Add ire ray.
Day raider read diary. I dye radar.
Dairy dare: aired yard.
Dryad Aire dried Arya.
A Dreary Id

“Space Gun 2036” (20 June 2019 for Wells et al)
“O Very Newt, we try oven.”
New Votery, Envy Tower,
Everytown

At the Vectory               5 May 2020
Germs are all around!  Every surface, every pore!
Pathogens abound!  Wuhan Flu™ and so much more!
Now I don’t know if I’m being cautious,
And I don’t know if I’m being fooled.
But I put on the mask like they ask us,
Though I know that I look like a tool.

Sanitize the world!  Spray down anything that moves!
Battle flags unfurled!  Our campaign is in the groove!
It’s a cinch that we’ll vanquish this virus!
By employing new means of control!
I can’t shake the thought that they’ve had us!
Or that next year I’m catching a cold.

A Lady Tonight, Syntax Be. 24 September 2020  
Predated Bill, Ted, and Yoda by decades, did Damon Runyan.
This he would do with most elegant prose.

Dough Reigh Miegh
12 October 2020  
A-C-B!
Much better than R-B-G!
Confirm her A-S-A-P, U-L-C,
Dems go mad throughout D-C!

14 November 2017

So, by “bad lyrics”, I mean (in addition to my own work) poorly or sloppily executed, as in (sometimes unnecessarily) forced rhymes (“…she twist and turn that thang…like a puppet on a strang…”) or extending a single syllable over several beats (“Eight Six Seven Five Three Oh Nigh Eee Ayn!”).

Also bad as in wicked, cruel, or evil.

I love The Beatles but I am a little creeped out by Maxwell’s Silver Hammer (“…came down upon his head…”), and even more disturbed by Run for Your Life (“I’d rather see you dead little girl…?” Please Paul, help John with his lyrics.)

Pop lyrics tell us that we are slaves to our impulses ( “The girl can‘t help it!”) and that free lunches are real. “Somebody hit the lights, so we can rock it day and night” leaves out too many steps. What I hear is, “Somebody [else forego consumption, and accumulate the capital reserves, to finance research and development, and build the infrastructure, to generate and distribute power, so some spoiled child can] hit the lights!”

They also tell us that women love to be dismissed, diminished, and denigrated. If it’s not true how could a popular song boast such beautiful sentiments as, “Hey, [insignificant object], let me [take care of the technical stuff. Due to my mother issues], I’m [difficult to deal with.]” Or, if you prefer the original Klingon: “Hey little thing let me light your candle. ‘Cause o’ Mama, I’m hard to handle.”

19 January 2019

If I DON’T like girls who are faster, or stronger, or smarter, or braver than me, then I MIGHT not like her, I MIGHT not like her.

Nice of her to settle the issue. In fact, it’s just plain decent of her to confess her deficiencies so clearly. Since “might” equals “might not” she’s telling the world that if I satisfy the first condition (not liking girls who are faster, stronger, &c), I still might like her (because “might not” equals “might”), so therefore I am faster, stronger, smarter, and braver than she is.

Okeh… but so what? Actually I‘m a little miffed that she would think so little of my ego as to suspect that I’d have any problem with competent women in the first place, and a little sad that she thinks so little of her own ego that she has to clarion her weaknesses to the world.

10 February 2020 — Introducing Ultimate Extreme Fierce Ice!
“It’s IN TENTS! …JACT! …WOAK“

15 February 2020 — In my Wye Isledest Dreams?
“Just to reveal your schemes, that is why I’ll dust dreams!”
-or- “When coaxing foam from steam, we use Wild Irish Cream!”

“Adventures in Bad Lyrics” is sponsored by The Confederate Mint (purveyors of metallic securities in gold, silver, copper, and lead).  For sample sheets of Metallic Certificates (total face value One Tenth Silver Dollar) send One Silver Dime plus a self-addressed stamped envelope; or Three United States Legal Tender Federal Reserve “Dollars” in scrip, check, or money order, to Greigh Area Associates, c/o Gene Greigh //  843 Carson Drive;  Lebanon, Ohio;  45036

14 July 2014
Meeting the meter is my metier, and I often fall for the allure of alliteration. But getting back to meter. What follows is kind of a collaboration, I guess. I don’t know if I actually wrote any of it, though I will confess to rearranging M Rouget de Lisle‘s brilliant original. You may have noticed that irrespective of melody many songs have matching meters (I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke, House of the Rising Sun, and Amazing Grace, for one memorable example.) And some meters merely overlap, sometimes just barely glancing off each other. My all-time favorite national anthem, Les Marseilles, has an amusing overlap with another favorite. To get yourself started before you start reading, try whistlin’ Dixie.

Allons enfant de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivez.
Aux armes! Aux armes! Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons, marchon, marchon!
Formez vos bataillons.  Marchon pour Dieu et Patrie.
Aux armes, aux armes, aux armes pour Dieu et Patrie.
Marchon, marchon. Aux armes pour Dieuuuuuuuuu…
Et Patrie!

“Please, unwrite this song”   (13 October 2018)
We got baaaaad lyrics,
It’s a horrible song.
It’s got baaaaad lyrics,
And it goes on too long.
I wish he never ever wrote it at all.
(repeat 8000 times and fade…)

11 November 2018 — These young ladies had an agenda.
They were determined to encounter the members of the ensemble.
They said, “Greetings gentlemen.  Let’s engage in coitus.”
Then they proceeded to demolish the innkeeper’s commercial enterprise.

13 January 2019 — Once again just like the last time and once again just like the last time and once again just like the last time and once again just like the last time and
once again just like the last time and once again just like the last time and
once again just like the last time and…
Yeah, repetitious, shall I get shall I get repetitious?
Yeah, repetitious, shall I get shall I get repetitious?
Yeah, repetitious, shall I get shall I get repetitious?
Yeah, repetitious, shall I get shall I …

29 April 2019 — Horrible lyricist, distraught over chronic artistic failure, takes own lie eye eye eye eye eye ife. Leaves note saying, “This is gonna be the last day of my lie eye ife.”
Whoa oh oh oh oh oh oh.

“Adventures in Bad Lyrics” is sponsored by The Confederate Mint (purveyors of metallic securities in gold, silver, copper, and lead).  For sample sheets of Metallic Certificates (total face value One Tenth Silver Dollar) send One Silver Dime plus a self-addressed stamped envelope; or Four United States Legal Tender Federal Reserve “Dollars” in scrip, check, or money order, to Greigh Area Associates, c/o Gene Greigh //  401 Rio Concho Drive, #105;  San Angelo, Texas;  76903

20 February 2018

Ah RENT!
Great songs! Memorable characters!
A thoroughly loathsome premise!

[We] went out to see RENT the other night, and we had a simply wonderful time. No, we didn’t get into it with the other (likely leftie) theatre goers. We were all there just for the exuberance and the music and the joy.
Still, the “other side” must be heard…
So now I wonder, should I write this?

It is…RANDT ( –or– “Ayn Rand’s RENT” )

The valiant struggle of heroic property owners to capitalize their assets, stimulate the productive sector, and enrich all of humanity, in the face of fierce opposition by moochers, second-handers, the aesthete, and an authoritarian collective enforcing its corrupt notions of “renters’ rights.”

Plot: Ellsworth Mouch and Wesley Toohey are a progressive couple living in a rent controlled loft. She is an architectural critic writing for the New York Boast, and she is a social worker at the Dept of Family Services. They are five hundred twenty-seven thousand forty minutes (It’s a leap year!) arrears in their rent.

Building owners and business couple Howard Galt and Dominique Taggart want to evict the squatters and clear out the tent city in their adjacent lot so they can sell out to real estate brokers and business couple Frank Hedon and Dagny Francon, who intend to flip the property to GunCo, who plan on developing a manufactory and firing range.

Complications ensue when Dominique’s and Dagny’s old romance flairs up again while Ellsworth and Wesley struggle with the City to get the property declared a Homeless Sanctuary Organic Garden Child Care AIDS Clinic.

Featured numbers include:
“No A, but is A” — “Take Me or Make Me” — “La Vie Agore” —
“Today 4 I” — and — “The Tango Francon”

14 June 2002

As a seasoned amateur performer, having participated in a score or more of community theatre productions, I have a love for both pageantry and audience participation. Thus, combining that with a love for this country, and for the flags of our past, present, and future, I have always enjoyed The Pledge of Allegiance. However, it has also somewhat troubled me. Many patriotic Americans love their country and her flag no less for being non-religious, and many of us, understanding the principles of States’ Rights and State Sovereignty, would often find ourselves pausing over the expression, “one nation, under god, indivisible.” While we are, indeed, a single confederation of states, there is no support in our Constitution for the concept of indivisibility, and, while there is no mention of a “separation of church and state,” the First Amendment does stipulate that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion,” which leads inevitably to the conclusion that there can be no Federal or national support for religion. Therefore, as a pledge to the flag of the United States, the expression, “one nation, under god, indivisible,” is, at best discordant, and more likely presumptuous.

I would not attempt to do away with a cherished public ritual that acts so well to draw a crowd to a common feeling and a common purpose. I would, however, like to offer an alternative to awkward silence for those of an atheist (or simply more private) persuasion, as well as those understanding the voluntary and confederal structure of our Union.

If I may…
I pledge allegiance to the flags of the united States of America,
and to the Republics for which they stand, sovereign states,
in confederation, with Liberty and Justice for All.