Goodbye & Hello

The antique people are down in the dungeons

Run by machines and afraid of the tax

Their heads in the grave and their hands on their eyes

Hauling their hearts around circular tracks

Pretending forever their masquerade towers

Are not really riddled with widening cracks

And I wave goodbye to iron

And smile hello to the air

The velocity addicts explode on the highways

Ignoring the journey and moving so fast

Their nerves fall apart and they gasp but can't breathe

They run from the cops of the skeleton past

Petrified by tradition in a nightmare they stagger

Into nowhere at all and they look up aghast

And I wave goodbye to speed

And smile hello to a rose

The king and the queen in their castle of billboards

Sleepwalk down the hallways dragging behind

All their possessions and transient treasures

As they go to worship the electronic shrine

On which is playing the late late commercial

In that hollowest house of the opulent blind

And I wave goodbye to Mammon

And smile hello to a stream

The vaudeville generals cavort on the stage

And shatter their audience with submachine guns

And Freedom and Violence the acrobat clowns

Do a balancing act on the graves of our sons

While the tapdancing Emperor sings War is peace

And Love the Magician disappears in the fun

And I wave goodbye to murder

And smile hello to the rain

The bloodless husbands are jesters who listen

Like sheep to the shrieks and commands of their wives

And the men who aren't men leave the women alone

See them all faking love on a bed made of knives

Afraid to discover or trust in their bodies

And in secret divorce they will never survive

And I wave goodbye to ashes

And smile hello to a girl

The antique people are fading out slowly

Like newspapers flaming in mind suicide

Godless and sexless directionless loons

Their sham sandcastles dissolve in the tide

They put on their deathmasks and compromise daily

The new children will live for the elders have died

And I wave goodbye to America

And smile hello to the world