We Call Upon The Author

Nick Cave and the bad seeds

What we once thought we had we didn't, and what we have now will never be that way again
 So we call upon the author to explain

Our myxomatoid kids spraddle the streets, we've shunned them from the greasy-grind
 The poor little things, they look so sad and old as they mount us from behind
 I ask them to desist and to refrain
 And then 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 finger cymbals chanted his name in code
 We shook our fists at the punishing rain
 And we call upon the author to explain

He said everything is messed up around here, everything is banal and jejune
 There is a planetary conspiracy against 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!
 Prolix! Prolix! Nothing a pair of scissors can't fix!

Well, I go guruing down the street, young people gather round my feet
 Ask me things, but I don'r know where to start
 They ignite the power-trail ssstraight to my father's heart
 And once again I call upon the author to explain

We call upon the author to explain

Who is this great burdensome slavering dog-thing that mediocres my every thought?
 I feel like a vacuum cleaner, a complete s*cker, it's f*cked up and he is a f*cker
 But what an enormous and encyclopaedic brain
 I call upon the author to explain

Oh rampant discrimination, mass poverty, third world debt, infectious diseease
 Global inequality and deepening socio-economic divisions
 Well, it does in your brain
 And we call upon the author to explain

Now hang on, my friend Doug is tapping on the window (Hey Doug, how you been?)
 Brings me back 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

I say prolix! Prolix! Something a pair of scissors can fix

Bukowski was a jerk! Berryman was best!
 He wrote like wet papier mache, went the Heming-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". Well, thank you, thank you, thank you
 And again I call upon the author to explain
 Yeah, we call upon the author to explain

Prolix! Prolix! There's nothing a pair of scissors can't fix!