Promise Land

I like old-time country stores and churches, old hardware stores, old barbershops and old-time bars with tin ceilings. If I had my choice, a large portion of my time would be spent in those sacred places. And when one of them vanishes into the shadows of our past, our beautiful country dies a little more... along with what is left of my people's heritage.

A couple months ago I was driving through a little Ohio town and saw that one of my favorite country stores was gone. In the window was a sign advertising the space as the meeting place for a church.

Have you noticed, how in tough times, the small town stores vanish and many are replaced by the common but still strange phenomenon of the Non-denominational storefront Church -- you know, the ones with the full sentence-length names?

Well, whether it's a foxhole or Main Street USA, human nature doesn't change much, do it....

Who or what do you put your faith in? The power of the US economy? The government as an extension of the "good" in humanity? Your neighbors? Smooth politicos with big plans and promises they can't pay for and designs on your wallet? Your pitifully frail and fatally flawed human self? Or the God so big that he holds universes in His hand and so artful that He designed every strand of your DNA - and knows your every thought.

This is a rough. And, if you care to reference, you'll find numerous paraphrased (and twisted) quotes from MLK throughout:

Promise Land

I used to drive thru every week or so, past the stoplight at the Dew Drop Inn
Get some egg-salad sandwiches, mayo, pickle relish, mustard mixed right in
Local farm-raised Chocolate milk right from the Amish Friends
As an early lunch, it’s good hang-over medicine

I didn’t pass thru for a year or more, and the economy set in
Blue-collar blight hit all the hotspot gentrification
No matter who the blames goes to, changes come with the election
While we all play our little violin

And the Village Store is now the village store-front church
With a name from a list of promises made from a politician’s perch
On a stage so far removed from all the pain and hurt
That you can’t see the end of all the promises
You can’t see the end of all the promises

It’s the Pentecostal Church of The Holy Roller Sanctified
To the 13th and no longer secret Apostle Stan the Mortified
Praise the ego as the alter on which the future’s sacrificed
A long-lost verse and a smaller slice of Pie (The Day the Future died)

Hope and Change and Righteousness and Love and Peace all Come To Him
With the Seven Signs, Four Horsemen, Second Coming tacked right on The End
Sweet Mary Holy Mother of All Sinners Take me IN
Oh save me... Hymn Forty-three

Oh, promise us the Promise Land
Promise us the Promise Land
Command the deficit to part
Right through that big hole in your heart
Raise that dead electric car
Put down your jobs and follow him
Oh… follow him

Golden tongue and golden words fall on the floor and spin
Make you dizzy with a light that glows from who knows where-why-how-and-when
Struck down there by the Spirit that flows around, without, within
Testify and tell a lot in the silence of your friends
If empty suits can empathize, oh… let him

The arc of the moral universe is long, but not that long
When it slips the balance point and it all tips toward wrong
No matter all the unarmed truth and love we dare sing in song
If there’s no justice
And there’s no mercy
And nothing burning
But the urgency of now

Oh, promise us the Promise Land
Promise us the Promise Land
Command the deficit to part
Right through that big hole in your heart...

And the Village Store is now the village store-front church
With a name from a list of promises made from a politician’s perch
On a stage so far removed from all the pain and hurt
That you can’t see the end of all the promises
You can’t see the end of all the promises

You can’t see the end of all the promises

You can’t see the end of all the promises

Ah, promise us the Promise Land

© DDC, 2009

The Funeral Plan...

The Funeral Plan

Here’s the deal:
I get to be right just one more time
So dispense with the speechery
There's nothing you can say
John Prine hasn't said better
Cut to the chase,
Crank it up and play them:
The Twenty-two Songs That You Can’t Live Without™
The order is important

And you people listen
While I drive the old jeep to the end of the road
I can smoke now. Flick the ashes out the window
There’s a half-bottle of bourbon under the seat
A cooler of good beer behind it
And if death is just a part of life
Then life is good

Listen
Just listen. I swear, just one more…
Oh, I forgot about this one
Who's driving?
Don't talk over the music
I'll make it loud enough
That you can't think of anything else
What else is there?
Gritty lyrics
In a back-country, four corner's bar
Up Jacob's Ladder, riding a simple melody
Down some full moon graveled track
That runs the ridge until it seems
To jump in between two rows of trees
And off into space

So listen
Then take them out there with you
When you go
Len - you remember the promise
Born To Live On Sugar Mountain
On the acoustic
In the parking lot
Sing it 'til I'm out of sight