Big Jim Hawkings leaned back in his tufted leather desk chair and lit a cigarette. The hinges and springs that secured the seat of the chair to it’s carriage-like base squeaked and groaned as he pushed his sturdy frame hard against the back of the chair, stretching his long legs out straight in front of him- and crossing them at the ankle.

He had done it.

Oh, they liked to think they had done it. But they knew, just like Big Jim knew, they could never have done it without him.

True, they had taken him out of a wheat field in the Northern Plains. They had funded and backed and bribed and funded some more until the face of Big Jim Hawkings was as casually accepted as the man of the people as was a trusted relation.

But it was Big Jim that endeared himself to the people. Sucked them right in- like marrow from a bone.

It was Big Jim with his slow southern drawl, and his well worn Carhartts. It was big Jim with his work hardened hands and his prayer callused knees.

It was Big Jim that had applied the oil to all the appropriate orifices, and Big Jim that had looked on and done nothing when they slammed the double edged sword of their ulterior altruism home- before the people even knew they were being bent over.

But more importantly, Big Jim had been there when the time came to lick the wounds he had greased the way for them to inflict. There to apply the salve of his own smooth tongue- when the people realized how brutally they had been ravaged.

And now it was Big Jim they would listen to. Big Jim they would trust.

So tomorrow when he called upon the people to rain down like fire from the heavens and cleanse the earth of the very corporate scum that had seen fit to create him- he had no doubt the people would follow his direction. No doubt that based solely on his utterances, the people would be willing to lay down their lives.

Oh, they had opened this window to the stars, alright- the night they chose him to be the face of their menace.

Big Jim chuckled to himself as the carriage-like base of his chair cried out, yet again for mercy.

“Now, I’d like to see ’em try an close it.”

Symphony of Destruction

You take a mortal man
And put him in control
Watch him become a god
Watch people’s heads a’roll
A’roll, a’ roll

Just like the Pied Piper
Led rats through the streets
We dance like marionettes
Swaying to the symphony
Of destruction

Acting like a robot
Its metal brain corrodes
You try to take its pulse
Before the head explodes
Explodes, explodes

Just like the Pied Piper
Led rats through the streets
We dance like marionettes
Swaying to the symphony

Just like the Pied Piper
Led rats through the streets
We dance like marionettes
Swaying to the symphony
Swaying to the symphony
Of destruction

The earth starts to rumble
World powers fall
A’warring for the heavens
A peaceful man stands tall
Tall, tall

Just like the Pied Piper
Led rats through the streets
We dance like marionettes
Swaying to the symphony

Just like the Pied Piper
Led rats through the streets
We dance like marionettes
Swaying to the symphony
Swaying to the symphony
Of destruction
Writer/s: Dave Mustaine

Symphony of Destruction was written by Megadeth founder and frontman, Dave Mustain. The song is about not only political leaders who act as puppets for the powerful organizations that control them, but also very much about We The People that blindly follow.

Pied Piper by Petr Melan

 

“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and common sense.”

― paraphrase of words credited to the Buddha 

This is my response to Jim Adam’s call for songs containing the words, Give, Get, Take, Receive or Send on this weeks Song Lyric Sunday.

The lead-in fiction was inspired by the three phrasal prompts offered on the OLWG #89. The phrases were:

he leaned back and lit a cigarette
Window to the stars
ulterior altruism

I am picking up a story-line where tnkerr left off on the practice write offered with this weeks OLWG prompts. Do yourself a favor and begin by reading tnkerr’s  Am I Here?.

********

We sat on the porch, Casper and I, he telling me the sensational tale of a man who literally pulled himself from the muck by his bootstraps, and I making notes as he spoke, until the twilight of the evening sky became a low lying quilt of blazing gold and violet that wrapped itself around the slowly setting sun gently nestling her into the cradle of the Cerrillos, far off in the distance.

No longer a young man, the evening’s recitation took an early toll on Casper and we parted soon after the sun set, with a promise to meet up again the next day. 

I took a cheap hotel in town, settled onto the swayback mattress provided and delved into the notes I had taken over the course of the evening. It didn’t take long for me to realize that although Casper had set out to tell me the tale of his life, what he had ended up imparting upon me was not really a story of the accomplishments of a lone man at all, but rather the story of one man’s life forged from the dross he had been shackled with at birth, by a most remarkable woman. 

A woman he met one particularly lonely night, on the back-side of a biting put down line in a bar once called the Alamo.  A woman who burned him to the ground, and then sifted through the ashes for the true grit of which Casper Coloradas was made and created out of that salvaged grit and ash, the man he was destined to become.

U + UR Hand
Check it out, goin’ out, on the late night.
Lookin’ tight, feelin’ nice, it’s a cockfight.
I can tell I just know that it’s goin’ down, tonight.
At the door, we don’t wait, coz we know them,
At the bar, six shots, just beginnin’,
That’s when dickhead put his hands on me, but you see-

I’m not here for your entertainment,
You don’t really want to mess with me tonight.
Just stop and take a second-
I was fine before you walked into my life.
Coz you know it’s over, before it began.
Keep your drink, just give me the money,
it’s just u & ur hand tonight.

Midnight, I’m drunk, I don’t give a fuck.
Wanna dance by myself, guess you’re outta luck,
Don’t touch, back up, I’m not the one, uh buh-bye.
Listen up, it’s just not happenin’,
You can say what you want to your boyfriends,
Just let me have my fun tonight, a’ight.

I’m not here for your entertainment,
You don’t really want to mess with me tonight.
Just stop and take a second-
I was fine before you walked into my life.
Coz you know it’s over, before it began.
Keep your drink, just give me the money,
It’s just u & ur hand tonight.

In the corner with your boys, you bet ’em five bucks,
You’d get the girl who just walked in but she thinks you suck.
We didn’t get all dressed up just for you to see-
Quit spilling your drink on me, yeah.

(You know who you are, high five and talkin’ shit,
But you’re goin’ home alone, aren’t ya?)

Cause- I’m not here for your entertainment,
You don’t really want to mess with me tonight.
Just stop and take a second-
I was fine before you walked into my life.
Coz you know it’s over, before it began.
Keep your dream, just give me the money,
It’s just u & ur hand tonight.

I’m not here for your entertainment,
You don’t really want to mess with me tonight.
Just stop and take a second-
I was fine before you walked into my life.
Coz you know it’s over, before it began.
Keep your dream, just give me the money,
It’s just u & ur hand tonight
U + Ur hand is credited as a collaboration between Pink, songwriters Max Martin and Rami (Yacoub) and record producer Luke Gottwald. It was performed by Pink and released on her 2006 album, I’m not Dead.

It gets its title from tried and true the put down line, “I guess it’s just you and your hand tonight.”

This is my response to Jim Adam’s call for songs containing the body parts, Ankles/Hands/Feet/Fingers/Toes/Wrists on this week’s Song Lyric Sunday. Although I owe it’s real inspiration to tnkerr.