Prelude to Beatrice / Hole in the Sky

I love my mother in her bed
In the river.
In the spring when I smell her,
In the breeze in my shiver.
And we are as close as the soil
Beneath my fingers;
Together,
My mother and I.

There’s a patch of reality on the President’s nose.
And with the President’s nose,
It just grows and it grows.
But he just puts on a band-aid and a “Gipper face,”
Points to the camera with his thumb.

The President pronounces all the words upon the page.
He does remarkably well,
For a man of his age.
He says, “The doctors have confirmed what you knew all along—
They say I’ve been to long sitting in the sun.”

“I hear those Chicken Littles whistling
The Audubon line
About the fallout falling, falling from the hole in the sky.
A bunch of commie welfare mommies
And they’re standing behind
All the rumors ’bout the tumors from the hole in the sky.”

There’s a whore on the tube down on Prime Time Street
She’s got the whole country craving,
For a little glass teat.
And she peddles the poon – sells it by the pound,
Pushing buttons deep down inside of everyone.

But she doesn’t like the way that my underarms smell,
Or my breath in the morning.
So she sells me some gel and some aerosol.
She says “The good Lord just never intended you
To have an odor like an animal son.”

I hear Beatrice whisper every promise in the book,
Through the acid in the rain
From the hole in the sky.
Every wrath from every heaven strollin’ down to take a look
At all the suckers
Sittin’ underneath the hole in the sky.

The son was once our friend – it was a healthy thing.
But now the soil is like cement,
And the icecaps are melting (we’re melting, we’re melting).
And sometimes it seems like stopping Beatrice,
Is like trying to stop an iceberg on a dead, steady run.

And now the sun has found the hole and it’s loosed the steeds of Hell,
And they’re all running
On Premium from Amoco and Shell.
And Beatrice is staring at the hole in the sky.
And Beatrice is laughing at the hole in the hole in the sky.

I hear Beatrice whisper every promise in the book,
Through the acid in the rain
From the hole in the sky.
Every wrath from every heaven strollin’ down to take a look
At all the suckers
Sittin’ underneath the hole in the sky.

“I hear those Chicken Littles whistling
The Audubon line
About the fallout falling, falling from the hole in the sky.
A bunch of commie welfare mommies
And they’re standing behind
All the rumors ’bout the tumors from the hole in the sky.”

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