Mickey Z

Cool Observer

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Mr. Clean meets Mr. Zimmerman...before I leave for the day

But first, please join me in offering a warm WTO welcome to Saudi Arabia:
http://tinyurl.com/ah8k2

...and here are the ants I promised Joe from Oregon:

(Stay away, Jim.)

Okay, back to the bald man…

(No, he and I are not related)

With out of town guests coming in for Michele’s party, we’ve done some serious apartment cleaning over the past few days. At one point, I was playing some Dylan as background music and found myself really connecting with lines written some forty years ago.

For example…

The reason for fighting I never got straight
But I learned to accept it/Accept it with pride
For you don’t count the dead when God’s on your side

...and these two stanzas from “Masters of War”:

You fasten all the triggers for the others to fire
Then you set back and watch while the death count gets higher
Then you hide in your mansion while the young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies and is buried in the mud

Let me ask you one question is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness/Do you think that it could
I think you will find when your death takes its toll
All the money you made will never buy back your soul

These assorted lines from “Chimes of Freedom”:

Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight
Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight
And for each and every underdog soldier in the night

Tolling for the rebel, tolling for the rake
Tolling for the luckless, the abandoned, and forsaked
Tolling for the outcast, burnin’ constantly at stake

Striking for the gentle, striking for the kind
Striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind
And the poet and the painter far behind beyond his rightful time

Tolling for the deaf and blind, tolling for the mute
For the mistreated, mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute
For the misdemeanor outlaw, chased and cheated by pursuit

Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
And for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail

Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones, and worse
And for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
We gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing

...and finally, of course, questions like this:

How many times must the cannon balls fly before they’re forever banned?
How many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry?
How many years can some people exist before they’re allowed to be free?
How many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?
How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see?