Or To Put It Another Way…
Or to put it another way…
Marx and Lenin went for a stroll
Eating a Kaiser roll
Along the shore, the despoiled shore, of the Red Sea.
And what did they see?
They saw the sea.
And the rusty beer cans and the cigarette butts and the discarded condoms.
The waves lapped
The dogs snapped
The fish did nothing but swim.
Marx and Lenin went walking along, singing a song
A workers song to be sure
And on the shore, the despoiled shore,
They met, you bet, Trotsky and Mao.
And we died in Leningrad, oh we certainly did
And we died on the plain in Spain in the rain
And today right now, and how,
We starve in sexy Rio; we starve in kinky Kinshasa and in poor old Port-au-Prince
And along the sunny beach in Mozambique
And in bad old Baghdad
Sitting in our doorway, Hunger is silent.
He needs no language.
He hears no music.
The rat-tat-tat of the AK-47s
Lulls the children to sleep, perchance to dream
There, on the rocky shores of the Red Sea
(Or was it the Dead Sea?)
Gramsci came limping along.
“It’s been so long,” said he “Since I’ve seen the sun or the sea.
In prison they tortured me.
So you see,
I’ve had plenty of Praxis.”
Then Liebknecht and Luxemburg
Jiggin’ and Jivin’
Walked out of the Dead Sea
(Or was it the Red Sea?)
Very wet and very red and very much alive
Rappin’ in Polish with simultaneous translation into German
No ones speaks Yiddish anymore
And we know why
And Rosa made a joke about Engels
And the roses bloom again
And the Diggers come out of the fields covered with dirt
And do a Morris Dance all night long
And the walls come tumbling down
And the subway rumbles underground
And the underground railroad carries them all to freedom
And freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose
And losing is what we do so well
And this Red Sea, are we sure of what we see?
Maybe it’s a lake
Or a puddle left by the storm
The storm that woke us up thirty years ago
The storm that shattered our windows and rattled our walls
And sent the rats scurrying every which way
Which way did you say?
No way home,
No way around it,
No way at all.
No roads but the ones we build.
Builders are we.
Look at the blisters on my hands.
Why are we tearing up the cobblestones?
It’s our job.
Where are the Communards?
On the barricades.
Too much monkey business for me to be involved in.
Too much and far too little.
Turn on the stove and boil some tea.
We’re in for a long, cold winter.
The quarrelsome commies came crumping along
Chanting slogans, clucking a song
Woe to waffles, woe to warts
Woe to all that’s sold and bought.
Now playing in Stockholm, Johannesburg, and Belgrade
In foggy London town
In rotting Denmark
On the streets of Nairobi and the clinics of Caracas
In Patterson and the Bronx
Taipei and Beijing
Call in your tanks
Your ideology has tanked
Totally
Awesome
Phat
Friends
Friends and comrades
Let us bow our heads and remember the dead
Let us dance a little dance and sing a little song
The Revolution’s coming, it won’t be long.
It will be very long
It will be endless
It will be televised
It will be on stage
It is on stage
It is on film
It is in your living room
Bedroom
In the kitchen
In the little blue glass filled with ice and vodka
In the gray cubicle at work
In the gray cubicle in you head
Performing now
Live and in person
Dead as doornail
Quiet as a mouse
Performing as Mickey Mouse
Forever let us hold our Red Books high, high, high
High as a kite
High as an elephant’s eye
High and dry
Been down so long it looks like up to me
It all looks up to me
To us
It looks like the Red
Sea
Is rising
Quite surprising
Would we could
Could we would
What was willing
So were we all
So were we all
What a sight
And the red, red robin
She is bob, bob, bobbing
She is bobbing
She is bobbing
She is bobbing
Along
2003