Every year, sometime in May, I think that I will record John Elwood Cook’s “Memorial Day” and publish it on Memorial Day. This year I made a sincere effort at the last minute. I failed to meet the deadline, but wound up with a different Cook song, plus a redo of my own “Ayahuasca” from a couple of years ago. I’d been wanting to redo that one, since there had previously been a dangling, unfinished verse, poking fun at the class-specific aspect of the psychedelic-healing renaissance.

Here’s the words to both:

Ayahuasca
by Boor

Well there’s a girl I know from work
And I suppose you know her too.
And there’s the guy who’s into crypto
In the A-frame next to you.
And there’s your lesbian ex-girlfriend
Whom you haven’t seen since college.
They’ve all become the bearers
Of some esoteric knowledge.

Cause they’re all takin Ayahuasca.

These days seems like everybody
Feels like something’s missing,
Like their chakras need aligning
And their boo-boos all need kissing.
And so they go online and find themselves
A shaman or a wizard.
And they drink some shit that makes ’em puke
And then they see a lizard.

Cause they’re all takin Ayahuasca.

They’re not your standard stoners
And they ain’t your basic ballers.
You can tell these frequent friars
By the colors of their collars.
Honey, this ain’t no white lightnin
Like they cook down in the hollers.
You can get a hit of this shit
For about a thousand dollars.

If you want to take ayahuasca,
Just like they’re all takin ayahuasca.

Oh, but when they get done hurling,
Well, their senses get to reeling.
And it’s nothing like a notion,
And it surely ain’t a feeling.
And it takes eleven hours
Just to peel them off the ceiling.
We used to call this getting high,
But now we call it healing.

Cause we’re all takin Ayahuasca.

Waterloo Bridge
by J.E. Cook

From the Waterloo Bridge,
Spit down in the dirty water.
This is not what it seems.
It’s not your normal daydream.
The Waterloo Bridge
Goes higher and higher
And I seem to be hanging off the edge
Of the Waterloo Bridge.
Spit down in the dirty water.

Everybody loves jumpers
In their own pathetic way.
And I feel like I’ve let the crowd
Down today.
Crucified in checkered slacks.
I’m a man with no impact
Unless it’s smack
Off the Waterloo Bridge.
Spit down in the in the dirty water.
This is not what it seems,
Not your normal daydream.
The Waterloo Bridge
Goes higher and higher
And I seem to be hanging off the edge,
Of the Waterloo Bridge.

Wibble-wobble, wibble-wobble.
C’mon, if you’re gonna go.
We’ve been taking time out of our day
To see the show.
Teetering won’t do,
for you.
Now totter.
Wibble-wobble, wibble-wobble.
Spit down in the dirty water.
This is not what it seems.
Not your normal daydream.
Teetering won’t do,
for you.
Now totter.
Wibble-wobble, wibble-wobble.
Spit down in the dirty water.

From the Waterloo Bridge,
Spit down in the dirty water.
This is not what it seems.
It’s not your normal daydream.
The Waterloo Bridge
Goes higher and higher
And I seem to be hanging off the edge
Of the Waterloo Bridge
Spit down in the dirty water.

If you’re playing something and it starts to sound enough like “Shortnin Bread” to remind you of “Shortnin Bread,” then it’s going to wind up at “Shortnin Bread” before long. So you might as well just call it “Shortnin Bread” and let it happen. That’s what I did and I have no regrets.

Ah, what the heck.

The Words:

The river flows and goes; it’s on unceasingly.
Whatever water is, it’s other than it’s gonna be.
Bubbles on the surface disappear; they don’t for long.
And all the nippers that I knew back in the day are gone.

Seen a tremor. Seen a fire. Seen a typhoon.
Pray to Amida, ’cause I know I’m gonna die soon.
Now did I hear a sucker nipper say “what”?
This is the record of the ten foot square hut.

Sucker Nippers buildin houses like there gonna last.
They don’t know shit about the future; they forgot the past.
But I ain’t stressin ’cause it’s nothin that I wanna grab.
Pick my house and I can move it like a hermit crab.

Don’t interrupt me when I’m flowin on my koto,
Inlfatin, imitatin the ways of Minamoto.
Live in the mountains, I don’t never wanna own a gun;
Rock the evanescent like my girl Sei Shonagon.

Now did I hear a sucker nipper say “what”?
This is the record of the ten foot square hut.

In my declining years, I deign to live alone.
I drop the mic. I drop the brush. I drop the ink stone.
But the I pick em up again so I can write a rhyme.
You suckers hastin, but I’m wastin all your precious time.

Don’t even matter, cause you know my flow is pleasant.
My mom and pop is out there cryin like a pheasant.
Ever present evanescence is my lesson, and it’s funky.
I shed a tear when I’m wailin with a monkey.

But I pity sucker nippers cause they don’t know how to rap at all.
Lose all their money every time they move the capital.
Did you hear the news? I never get the blues,
Chumpin sucker nippers with particular views.

I’m a lonely rajaputra. I don’t have to pay no rent.
When I read the Lotus Sutra I’m about to pitch a tent.
Never harm a living creature; I don’t wanna get bent.
Kick it with the Dharma cause my karma’s all spent.

That’s why I’m droppin all the servants and the loot, so
When I get tired of intoning the nembutso,
That’s when I’m rollin with my homie, who is ten, yo.
We picking cogon grass; don’t even need a hoe.

All you sicker nippers no my crib is so fly,
Cause I like small huts and I cannot lie.

The river flows and goes …

Here’s a Billy Joe Shaver song for all you broke folks out there.

This is one of those songs in which I merely take some real events and make them rhyme. The color of the pickup truck has been changed for metrical reasons.

The Words:

Well, the first time you met my family
It was Uncle Bud’s Interment.
He was in an igloo cooler
In a yellow pickup truck.

They took the cooler from the truck bed,
Took the urn out of the cooler,
Used the cooler for a table.
We was all like “What the fuck?”

And after that you met my cousins on the lawn.
You said “I’m sorry for your loss,”
And they said, “Girl, we’re glad he’s gone,”
“Cause he was ornery and hard to be around.”
“He got meaner as he went into the ground.”
“But enough of that. We’re awful glad you’re here.”
“Got some mean potato salad. Grab a burger. Have a beer.”

And Uncle Bud was sleepin silent in the loam.
And the sun was slippin gentle
Down the maples of my Adirondack home.

Well I remember that cold winter
When we found him in the back lot
Lyin by his little tractor
Barely stretchin out his breath.

He’d built his own homemade enclosure
Out of one-by-four and plastic.
But it covered the exhaust.
He almost gassed himself to death.

And maybe if he woulda died upon that day
My cousins might have somethin else to say.
But some folks don’t even know they’re in the mud.
One among them was my dear old Uncle Bud.

Well these days I can’t remember
What I did there in that holler;
Why I woke up so damn early
Ringin bells and singin songs.

But I still have my hope of heaven,
Like some leaven in a starter,
Where the sons of Love will wake up
Like we been there all along.

And I still hope that Uncle Bud will be there too,
Shinin brightly with a light he never knew.
He won’t remember what’s it’s like to be alone,
Out where the sun is drippin gentle
Down the birches of my Adirondack home.