Desolation Row - Chris Smither

They’re selling postcards of the hanging

They’re painting the passports brown

The beauty parlor is filled with sailors

The circus is in town

Here comes the blind commissioner

They’ve got him in a trance

One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker

The other is in his pants

And the riot squad they’re restless

They need somewhere to go

As Lady and I look out tonight

From Desolation Row

Now Cinderella, she seems so easy

«It takes one to know one,» she smiles

And puts her hands in her back pockets

Bette Davis style

And in walks Romeo, he’s moaning

«You belong to me I believe»

And someone says, «You're in the wrong place, my friend

You Better leave»

And the only sound you can hear

After the ambulances go

Is Cinderella sweeping up

On Desolation Row

Now Ophelia, she’s 'neath the window

For her I feel so afraid

On her twenty-second birthday, she already is an old maid

To her, death is quite romantic, she wears an iron vest

Her profession’s her religion, her sin is her lifelessness

And though her gaze is gazed upon Noah’s great rainbow

She spend her time peeking in from

Desolation Row

Now, Einstein disguised as Robin Hood with his memories in a trunk

Passed this way an hour ago with his friend, a jealous monk

He looked so immaculately frightful as he bummed a cigarette

As he went off sniffing drainpipes and reciting the alphabet

Oh, you would not think to look at him but he was famous long ago

For playing the electric violin

On Desolation Row

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world inside of a leather cup

But all his sexless patients they’re trying to blow it up

Now his nurse, some local loser she’s in charge of the cyanide hole

And she also keeps the cards that read «Have mercy on his soul»

They all play on the penny whistles, yes, you can hear then blow

If you lean your head out far enough from

Desolation Row

Across the street they’ve nailed the curtains

They’re getting ready for the feast

The Phantom of the Opera

In a perfect image of a priest

Now they’re spoon-feeding Casanova

To get him to feel more assured

Then they’ll kill him with self-confidence

After poisoning him with words

And the Phantom’s shouting to skinny girls

«Get outta here if you don’t know»

Casanova is just being punished for going to

Desolation Row

Now, at midnight all the agents

And the superhuman crew

They’ll round up everyone

That knows more than they do

They take them to the factory

Where the heart-attack machine

Is strapped across their shoulders

And then the kerosene

Is brought down from the castles

By insurance men who go

Make sure nobody is escaping

To Desolation Row

Bob praise be to Nero’s Neptune

The Titanic sails at dawn

Everybody’s shouting

«Which side are you on?»

And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot

They’re fighting in the captain’s tower

While calypso singers laugh at them, yes

And fishermen hold flowers

Between the windows of the sea

Where lovely mermaids flow

And no one has to think too much about

Desolation Row

Yes, I received your letter yesterday

About the time the door knob broke

When you asked how I was doing

Was that some kind of joke?

All these people that you mention

Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame

I had to rearrange their faces

And give them all another name

Right now I can’t read so good

Don’t send me no more letters, no

Not unless you mail them from

Desolation Row