Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
"We Call Upon The Author"

What we once thought we had we didn't
and what we have now will never be that way again
so we call upond the author to explain!

pur myxomatoid kids spraddle the streets
we've shunned them from the greasy-grind
(the poor little things) they look so sand & old
as they mount up from behind
I ask them to desist and to refrain
the we call upon the author to explain!

(rosary clutched in his hand
he died with tubes up his nose
and a cabal of angels with fingher cymbals
chanted his name in code)
we shook our fists at the punishing rain
and we called upon the author to explain!

he said -- everything is messed up round here /everything is banal
and jejune / there is a planetary conspiracy / againsta the likes of you
and me / in this idiot
constituency of the moon -- (well, he knew exactly who to blame)
and we call upon the author to explain!

PROLIX! PROLIX! NOTHING A PAIR OF SCISSORS CAN'T FIX!

I go guruing down the street
young people gather round my feet
ask me things - but I don't know where to start
they ignite the powder-trail straight to my father's hear
and once agai I call upon the author to explain

whi is this great burdensome slavering dog-thing that mediocres my every though?
I feel like a cacuum cleaner! a complete sucker! (it's fucked up and he is a fucker)
but what an enorous and encyclopaedic brain!
I call upon the author to explain!

o rampant discrimination/ mass poverty/ third world debt/infectious
disease/ global inequality and deepening socio-economic divisions---
(it does in your brain)
we call upon the author to explain!
now hang on! my freind Doug is tappung on the window
(hey Doug, how you been??)
brings me a book on holocaust poetry
---complete with pictures---
then tells me to get ready for the rain
and we call upon the author to explain!

PROLIX! PROLIX! SOMETHING A PAIR OF SCISSORS CAN FIX!

Bukowski was a jerk! Berryman was best!
he wrote like wet papier mache/ went hte Hemming-way/ weirdly
on wings and with maximum pain
we call upon the author to explain!

down in my bolthole I see they've published
another volume of unreconstructed rubbish
"the waves, the waves were soldiers moving"
thank you! thank you! thank you! & again!