I'm wheels, I am moving wheels
I am a 1952 studebaker coupe
I'm wheels, I am moving wheels moving wheels
I am a 1952 starlite coupe...
En route.....les Souterrains
Des visions du Cody...Sartori a Paris...
Strange spaghetti in this solemn city...
There's a postcard we're all seen before...
Past wild-haired teens in dark clothing
With hands-full of autographed napkins we
eat apples in vans with sandwiches ... rush
Into the lobby life of hurry up and wait
Hurry up and wait for all the odd-shaped keys
Which lead to new soap and envelopes...
Hotel room homesickness on a fresh blue  bed
And the longest-ever phone call home.....no
Sleep no sleep no sleep no sleep and no mad
Video machine to eat time... a cityscene
I can't explain, the Seine alone at 4am
The Seine alone at 4a.m....Neal and Jack and me
Absent lovers, absent lovers...

Good morning, it's 3am in this great roaring
city full of garbage eaters ravaging parking
spots beneath my plaza window I see cheetah in their
tight skins  and tired heels all-night hippo in
the diner crossing the street swarthy heards of young
impala flambastic gibbon even a struggling monza
and over there that brilliant head ornament on that
Japanese macaque but look closely at the hammerhead hand
in hand with the mandrill, it's a sight you're
unlikely to see anywhere else on the planet...

the stench and noise, yes, yes, the howler's
resonating repertoire is not too bad when mixed with
the more musical twern of the tropical warbler but the
impatient taxi blare the squawking elderly ibis and
the glass-eye snapper hawking papers I can certainly
live without also be cautious of the poisonous
boomslang laughter social droppings of the fruit bat
and purple queen fish and who's that babbler conversing
with a magazine stand? evidently he's getting a good
reply...

arrive in neurotica
through neon heat disease
I swear at the swarming heards
I sweat the foul terrain
I rove the moving scenery
I have no fin
no wing no stinger
no claw no camouflage
I have no more to say...

Say...isn't that an elephant fish on the corner over
there look at that blush baby mud puppy noolbenger
rhinoderma marmoset spring peeper shingleback skink
siren skate starling sun-gazer spoonbill and suckers,
they seem to be everywhere, well it's a live revue
random animal parts now playing nightly right here in neurotica...
so long...

Shine, shine, the light of good works shine
The watch before the city gates depicted in their prime
That golden light all grimy now
Three hundred years have passed
The worthy Captain and his squad of troopers standing fast

The artist knew their faces well
The husbands of his lady friends
His creditors and councillors
In armour bright, the merchant men

Official moments of the guild
In poses keen from bygone days
The city fathers frozen there
Upon the canvas dark with age

The smell of paint, a flask of wine
And turn those faces all to me
The blunderbuss and halberd-shaft
And Dutch respectability

They make their entrance one by one
Defenders of that way of life
The redbrick home, the bourgeoisie
Guitar lessons for the wife

So many years we suffered here
Our country racked with Spanish wars
Now comes a chance to find ourselves
And quiet reigns behind our doors
We think about posterity again

And so the pride of little men
The burghers good and true
Still living through the painter's hand
Request you all to understand

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