20th Century Blues

What do you call it, bobsled champion, and you, too, Olympic roller-coaster ace, high-diving queen, what is the word, number one man on the Saturday poker squad, motion picture star incognito as a home girl, life of the party or you, the serious type, what is it, what is it,

When it’s just like a fever shooting up and up and up but there are no chills and there is no fever, just exactly like a song, like a knockout, like a dream, like a book,

What is the word, when you know that all the lights of all the cities of all the world are burning bright as day, and you know that some time they all go out for you, or your taxi rolls and rolls through streets made of velvet, what is the feeling, what is the feeling, when the radio never ends, but the hour, the swift, the electric, the invisible hour does not stop and does not turn, what does it mean, when the get-away money burns in dollars big as moons, but where is there to go that’s just exactly right, what have you won, plunger, when the 20 to 1 comes in, what have you won, salesman, when the dotted line is signed, True Confession lover, when her eyelids flutter shut at last, what have you really, really won, and what is gone, soldier, soldier, step-and-a-half marine who saw the whole world, hot-tip addict, what is always just missed, picker of crumbs, how much has been lost, denied, what are all the things destroyed,

Question mark, question mark, question mark, question mark, and you, fantasy Frank, and dreamworld Dora, and hallucination Harold, and delusion Dick, and nightmare Ned,

What is it, how do you say it, what does it mean, what’s the word, that miracle thing, the thing that can’t be so, quote, unquote, but just the same it’s true, that third-rail, million-volt exclamation mark, that ditto, ditto, ditto, that stop, stop, go.