1. 1816, THE YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER

In the spring of 1315
There began an era of unpredictable weather
It did not lift until 1851
You remember 1816 as the year without a summer

June 1816
A sudden snowstorm blankets all the country side
So Mary Shelly had to stay inside
And she wrote Frankenstein
Oh 1816 was the year without a summer

Grain couldn't ripen under these conditions, no
It was brought in-doors in urns and pots
It'd go from 95 degrees to freezing within hours
A brutal struggle for the people and the starving livestock

During the most sever years of this little ice age
We looked for scapegoats to blame
Many people tried to blame it all
On a vast Freemason conspiracy
Or Benjamin Franklin and his experiments with electricity

The eruption of the volcano Tambora
Blanketed the earth with ash
That was the real cause discovered by some explorer
Years later, looking back at the past

I will give you
My red color
To take away your sickly pallor
For you were very choleric of complexion
Please beware the mounting sun
And all dejection

1816 was the year without a summer


2. CHOOSE ME FOR CHAMPION

Choose me to be your champion
I am possessing of a very righteous style
I understand what's happening
I have charisma and of course a winning smile
I stand accused of being an audacious redeemer
Not a charge I can deny
I have refused the way of the liar and the schemer
And I'm not afraid to die

Hark back to the mighty shipwreck
How ancestors of islanders are we
How the ship sank like a sinking think-tank
Our memories are gone and sunk at sea
We have allowed ourselves to be insulted by invaders
For the longest of years
I will employ all my cunning and my patience
Then we will persevere

I find I can get behind
Heretical ideas and make them real
You do what you want to do
I cannot tell you how to feel
But if the grievous deeds of the Floridian forces
Haven't opened up your eyes
I will get down on my knees and the Pitcairnian Women's Chorus
Will shout up to the skies

There's only twenty-four of us
Here on this island, in the sea.
We know Queen Mary Todd has sent her army
And I can be the hero that you need me to be!
Oh, my visionary people
You don't need powerful binoculars to see
That we're descendants of the Bounty mutineers
And I can liquidate your fears
And Pitcairn Island will be free!

(Free in the air)
We don't want those blimps coming here!
(Free in the sea)
A colonial offshoot – is that what you want us to be?
(Freedom is fine)
The responsibility of saving all our lives on Pitcairn Island should be mine!

Consider Thursday October Christian. He's a great rebel and I am exaggerating only very slightly. He wore no clothes but a piece of cloth about his loins. "Heroism is no more than a chapter in a tale of submission. The walls of oppression and humiliation cannot be demolished except in a rain of boomerangs,” Christian said Monday in response of Thursday's balloon massacre.


3. CAGE IN A CAVE

Fletcher Christian, he found a cave
On the northern tip of the island
It was a sort of privacy place
When he'd go there nobody could find him
Humiliation was imminent
He'd rather die than be sent back to England
From this height he'd conduct his last fight
Should a ship be sent in to persue them

Fletcher Christian, he found him a cave
And he'd go there to be alone

Up a narrow and dangerous path
To his mountain side cavern obsession
He'd paint a picture, he'd comb his hair
Anything to relieve his depression
"Let history witness my honor is tossed
And my men are all lost by extension."

Fletcher Christian he'd go to his cave
When he needed to be alone
A cage in a cave . . .

It's next to the water
Oh yeah, he's Thursday's father
Guess what his defense is?
He's built himself a barricade of logs

Sick of the back-bitting
All the infighting
Each sailor he wants his own way
If the island is his kingdom
Where is all his freedom?
Tahitian women are not all they say

To fits of melancholy
He was increasingly prone
In thinking back on what he'd done
He should have known -
That left to their own devices
This kind of rabble would kill for a wife
And he knew why Captin Bligh had gone off the deep end
When they'd sent him back home

Fletcher Christian he found him a cave
And he'd go there to be alone
In a cage in a cave . . .


4. INCIDENT IN A MEDICAL CLINIC

Quite unbelievably
I want someone to be sweet to me
When I am in absolutely horrible pain
Thank you for keeping this vigil, doctor
These infections are becoming quite popular
I never meant for it to turn out quite this way

An antidote's been elusive
The specialist can't deduce
If this isn't curable
Now a disease defines me
My fever intensifies.
See, I get delusional

Some survive,
Some survive,
Some survive
Because of the way that they walk
Because of the look in their eyes
(Look in their eyes)

“Almost everybody has, has snail fever,”
The doctor whispered in my ear,
“Some get treated, feel better. Some don't.
The cause is still unclear
We are unable to treat you here.”
Unwilling patients with treatments
They suddenly discontinue
Dangerous infections
Are sneaking into superficial wounds

Some escape
With their lives
Some survive
Because of the way that they walk
Because of the look in their eyes
(Look in their eyes)

Scratch an existing wound, open an old one
It's extraordinarily hard
Succumbing bone-by bone, bone and bowel, heart-in-hand
This diseases pervades us all
It can therefore manifest anywhere, in anyone, at any moment

Dr. Bernstein, Bernstein

Quite unbelievably
I want someone to be sweet to me
When I am in absolutely horrible pain


5. DRACONIAN CRACKDOWN

A tragic demonstration
Of brazen insubordination,
By indigenous insurgents,
Belligerents, degenerates.
Imagine my bewilderment at the conspicuous dismemberment
Of all that I had believed,
Of how we have all been deceived.

It was short, sharp, sudden, surprising.
Short, sharp, sudden…
It was unfathomable catastrophe.
There were things no one should ever see.
Arrests were made arbitrarily,
Evacuations made mandatory,
Indefinite detentions, unsolvable killings,
Weeks and weeks of agonizing raids,
Relentless, unexplained physical attacks,
Gout, goiters, plague, anthrax,
New and unconventional threats,
Simultaneously secretive and violent events.

Oh, what have they done?
But, here is no fun
To a draconian crackdown. A
So, what will you do
When they come for you
In the draconian crackdown?

Yes sir, I say no sir and then…
Yes sir, I say no sir again.

Something's wrong, oh very, very wrong here –
The chaotic nature of the soured atmosphere.
We have found ourselves participant in their nightmare.

I took the blame, the hatred, then with certainty
I said “Now I declare the state of emergency
With immediate effect indefinitely.”

I lurked, I plotted
And I planned, from here –
A fearful, vicious secret no-man's-land.
I lurked, I plotted
And I planned, from here –
A fearful, vicious secret no-man's-land.

Oh, what have they done?
But, here is no fun
To a draconian crackdown. A
So, what will you do
When they come for you
In the draconian crackdown?

Oh, what will you do
When the draconian crackdown?

Spectacular suicide explosions
Our enemies are significantly weaker than a year ago
And their influence continues to wane


6. CHILD SOLDIER REBELLION

Child-soldier children
From the soldier rebellion,
These children rebel again.

Waiting for airships that never arrive,
With crosses on suitcases, novelty knives,
They aimlessly wander the beach all that day.
Eventually most of them shuffled away.

A matchbox bears my picture.
It details the reward for my capture.
“Not one person here has helped me.”
Reads the caption under my picture, see?

The young they are, the more fearless!
But they were betrayed by merchants who had offered them seven ships.
“We were maimed, tortured and kidnapped.
They cut off our ears, limbs and lips.”

Oh my dears, when they hear the news
That's been written in tears,
They will know there's no way to excuse
The lies that were used to force them to fight.

Then into their rag tag clothing
An officer sews.
He says, “This will make for victorious battles.
It is a magical stone.”

Emmanuele looks down at the ground
As he fumbles with the tassels on his boots.
He can still hear the sound
Of many rebel groups
Or the government militia.
Who he'd been fighting for,
No, no, he had no idea…

Child-soldier children
From the soldier rebellion,
These children rebel again.

Child-soldier children
From the soldier rebellion,
These children rebel again.


7. OH BRING BACK THE EGG UNBROKEN

Just one island
In an ugly string
Of prehistoric penal colonies
This island
Is a most remote inhabited spot on Earth
Each family possesses a registered trademark
That is chipped into the truck of a tree

Oh, bring back the egg unbroken
The egg of the sooty nesting tern
And you will be made king
Of this island now

The women
Have gone on up the Cliffside
They're gathering eggs
Of their own
We'll have them at the celebration
When the king is chosen now

Jump off the cliff into the ocean
You grab an egg
You swim back
Holding it aloft
You hold it high above the roughest
Of the shark infested water, now
Oh, my love
You bring the egg unbroken back
You are the king

You are the king
Oh, bring the egg unbroken back
You are the king
Oh, we'll be thinking
Of the ocean
When the king brings back unbroken
The egg of the sooty nesting tern

Some well known lost but ancient wisdom
The point and purpose
Which was mysterious
Or even vague
It says the truth is worse
Than you could possibly imagine
And we islanders,
We'll be thinking of escape

Oh, we'll be thinking
We'll be thinking
We'll be thinking of escape

We'll be thinking
We'll be thinking
We'll be thinking of escape


8. OLD YELLOWCAKE BREAKING NEWS


9. IN OLD YELLOWCAKE

Smoke rises from an ice factory on the edge, on the edge of a city that exists in perpetual gloom. I snatch a note from the basket of a passing bicycle. It says “Go to the flour factory. There's something waiting there for you.”

Under the window, covered by curtains, all lacy and splattered with blood, we find crutches in the corner and bullets on she shelves, which I dismiss at once as being equivalent, irrelevant, in and of themselves.

Underneath the staircase there's a mast which flies a flag. Despite dankness beyond imagining, it floats on to a higher hole. In tunnels gouged beneath the basement room are, unmistakably, sets of bloody handprints on a crumbling wall.

Oh, won't you be there with me for it tonight? In this hut-to-hut witch hunt down the tunnels of Old Yellowcake, where all the souls in the city go drowning by starlight, where each choice you make is a fierce firefight or a new mistake?

Inside of a room is a cage, is a cage. It's made out of chain and glass. It's about forty feet high and three feet wide, it was built to last. It's against a brick wall in an old muddy corner of a basement tunnel room. There's a man in the cage in the old muddy corner. He's asleep but he'll wake up soon.

Under the window, covered by curtains, all lacy and splattered with blood, we find crutches in the corner and bullets on she shelves, which I dismiss at once as being equivalent, irrelevant, in and of themselves.

Oh, won't you be there with me for it tonight? In this hut-to-hut witch hunt down the tunnels of Old Yellowcake, where all the souls in the city go drowning by starlight, where each choice you make is a fierce firefight or a new mistake?


10. WE STAY BEHIND

"There was a black rainbow
That rose up and covered the town!"
Exclaimed Howard Blue, 22
"I never even had a nightmare
Or a beautiful dream about this," He said
As he watched the warehouses burn

The hurricane pilot
Swoops into the 25-mile-wide eye
And he gasps 'cause the size of it was astounding
The towering columns of cumulonimbus stretched six miles high

Two friends remembered
A wooden leg
With a shoe
Detached from its owner while he slept
Twenty-two bodies found tied together in Violet

Living in a mausoleum
Making governments of our own
As the sky turned pink, four horses emerged from the water
Led by a stallion, they
Start grazing on neutral ground

We are the ones
The ones who stay behind, we stay behind
We are the ones
The ones who stay behind, we stay behind


11. A RETINUE OF MOONS

A retinue if moons, of icy moons
They illuminate the land
And they make me thing of you
What sunk silently
To the depths of a mystery
A clue that only
One scientist knew

Who knew that the sky is now found to contain
Benzene and methane and chalk
And bloody mud, muddy blood from the sky
From the sickly sweet wings of Edith's Checkerspot Butterfly?
They die in the ocean
Their legs are broken
The rain slows their flight as it soaks their wings

A microphone will listen for thunder
The telephone will dial the number
To deliver a, a clearer picture
Of weird wet weather
This puts all previous discoveries in doubt
These are things we have theories about

Overhead two sky titans
They collide in slow motion
While over the Ice Tongue, fluid flows
A 1000-foot thick chunk of sediment is exposed
Your own special home

A choking, vapor-laced haze
Obscured by acid rain
Enveloping everything
On the edge of the Milky Way

-The Infidel Is Me

Am I the infidel?
I thought it was supposed to be someone else
But I see now it's me
I am my own worst enemy

Just think of it
The sequence of the incidents was intricate
So brilliant yet illegitimate
Not disastrously but triumphantly
When we met in the secret facility
I said, (you remember what I said)
“It'll be easy for you to recognize me
By the coils of concentina wire
Surrounding my head in a shiny halo
Of sharp blades.”

“There are people here
That would do you great harm
So please, just try to stay calm
And i'll get you through this,”
You whisper
And with that, my illegance had shifted

The betrayal, the delusions
My Quantico rejection
The isolation, the breakdowns
And mysterious injections
Ah, the infidel is me

Then it was I
The lone futurist leading scores of resistors
Armed with tridents
But you're not there

Why can't you come in from the cold?
Why can't you come in from the cold
To make an unlikely alliance with me?

Why don't you come in from the cold?
Why don't you come in from the cold
To make an unlikely alliance with me

Ay, the Infidel is me

And in defiance of our alliance
I say, go away and lick your wounds
And when you get them really clean again
You can dream away your dark dream

Ay, the Infidel is me.


12. THE PRUNING

On the border of an orchard
On a cultivated lawn
Where they practice horticulture
There they know what's going on
They're not afraid to cut it.

Well then, the best get picked
From this virtuous thicket,
By scythe or scissor,
By instrument and implement.
That's how they cut it.

It's time to trim and thin
An invasive vine.
The roots are lifted,
The leaves are dry.
From natural laws to material things,
Nothing in the truth can be changed.

Oh perilous world-
You're showing every sign of losing your heart.
Fledgling and tattered
During these strange later days
Just before it all fell apart.

You can build such fantastic palaces
On foundations of straw,
On weird promises,
But with one fatal flaw.

The seedling is taken as a delicacy,
By the sower who's mowing down the nursery.
The reaper is hiding in the flowerbeds.
They're each thinking over what the other said.

They said “We each disturb the earth
But now my friend, yes, you did it first,
Yes you did, la da de”

It's time to trim and thin
An invasive vine.
The roots are lifted,
The leaves are dry.
From natural laws to material things,
Nothing in the truth can be changed.

Oh, you perilous garden.
Forever dying.