You can’t hear the church bells; the guitars are too loud. Those scuzzy boys and their rockyroll. Someone told those boys, those snotty little brats, that they’d never die, and–seeing as how they were too busy learning how to play a D chord to attend to their studies–they bought it. That’s freedom rock, man. Turn it up. And it drowns out the church bells.
They ring ’em for babies, even the dead ones, and they ring ’em for couples, even the ones who were beating on each other in the rectory before the ceremony, and they ring ’em when the soldiers come home. Soldiers come home one way or another. Izzy the Priest slit his wrists in the mall. Right where Santa sits come December, but it was April and so he wasn’t there. Bells rang for Izzy the Priest, too.
And, lo, Joseph did return to his fields and to his brothers.
He looked so fine.
“Brother,” they said. “Where did you get that coat?”
Joseph answered them,
“In a Dolly Parton song.”
Behind every prophet is a brother rolling his eyes.
The guitars are too loud; you can’t hear the church bells. Assumption of their toll is the odds play.
He looks like Jeff Lynne,
There I said it..