Bucket List

Best Experienced With:       Bruce Springsteen;           Lost in the Flood (live)

(Right click on the link below to open it in a new browser window, then follow the directions below regarding your bucket list.   You are welcome)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnNFefsP8g4

Do you have a bucket list?  

 Does it have “see Springsteen sing all his tunes from’ Greetings From Asbury Park’ live” on it?

If not, you might want to cue up that video up there, take it for a test ride, and then copy and paste the line below into your bucket list.

“See Springsteen sing all his tunes from ‘Greetings From Asbury Park’ live”

The ragamuffin gunner is returning home like a hungry runaway
He walks through town all alone
He must be from the fort he hears the high school girls say
His countryside’s burning with wolfman fairies dressed in drag for homicide
The hit and run, plead sanctuary, beneath a holy stone they hide
They’re breaking beams and crosses with a spastic’s reeling perfection
Nuns run bald through Vatican halls pregnant, pleading immaculate conception
And everybody’s wrecked on Main Street from drinking unholy blood
Sticker smiles sweet as gunner breathes deep, his ankles caked in mud
And I said, “Hey, gunner man, that’s quicksand, that’s quicksand that ain’t mud
Have you thrown your senses to the war or did you lose them in the flood?”

That pure American brother, dull-eyed and empty-faced
Races Sundays in Jersey in a Chevy stock super eight
He rides her low on the hip, on the side he’s got” Bound For Glory” in red, white and blue flash paint
He leans on the hood telling racing stories, the kids call him Jimmy The Saint
Well the blaze and noise boy, he’s gunnin’ that bitch loaded to blasting point
He rides head first into a hurricane and disappears into a point
And there’s nothing left but some blood where the body fell
That is, nothing left that you could sell
Just junk all across the horizon, a real highwayman’s farewell
And I said, “Hey kid, you think that’s oil? Man, that ain’t oil that’s blood.”
I wonder what he was thinking when he hit that storm
Or, was he just lost in the flood?

Eighth Avenue sailors in satin shirts whisper in the air
Some storefront incarnation of Maria, she’s puttin’ on me the stare
And Bronx’s best apostle stands with his hand on his own hardware
Everything stops, you hear five, quick shots, the cops come up for air
And now the whiz-bang gang from uptown, they’re shooting up the street
And that cat from the Bronx starts letting loose
But he gets blown right off his feet
And some kid comes blasting round the corner but a cop puts him right away
He lays on the street holding his leg screaming something in Spanish
Still breathing when I walked away
And someone said, “Hey man did you see that? His body hit the street with such a beautiful thud.”
I wonder what the dude was saying or was he just lost in the flood?
Hey man, did you see that, those poor cats are sure messed up
I wonder what they were getting into, or were they just lost in the flood?

In Mr. Springsteen’s earlier work, he was clearly channeling Ireland’s own William Butler Yeats.  

Pre-“Born in the USA” Springsteen.

Accept no poetic substitutes