Lee Bains + The Glory Fires

THE COMPANY MAN
Mimi, tell me about old Bull!
Mean and proud even praying in the pew.

Putting profits in the black with businessmen on Sunday,
Monday morning, beating prophets black and blue.

Remember Woodruff Park! Where America’s stepkids
Sang, “We Shall Overcome,” and
Were corralled by cops under the Georgia-Pacific sign,
And hauled off down Andrew Young!

“Don’t ever bite the fingers that feed you,”
Said Pilate, as he washed the invisible hand.
So, be good, take care, and Godspeed you,
And, lest you forget it,
Don’t ever trust the Company Man.

Hear the poets and professors
Postulate how we all got so robbed.
All it takes is one wicked heart, a pile of money,
And a chain of folks just doing their jobs.

“Don’t ever bite the fingers that feed you,”
Said Pilate, as he washed the invisible hand.
So, be good, take care, and Godspeed you,
And, lest you forget it,
Don’t ever trust the Company Man.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,”
On the Mount we heard Him say.
“You’ve got to serve either me or him.”
We just turned and walked away.


DERECONSTRUCTED
We were raised on ancient truths,
And ugly old lies.
But I learned how to say a firm “No sir,”
Looking in them old yellow eyes.
Looking in them old hateful eyes.

We were whooped with the Good Book,
Wound up shamed, sorry and worse.
But I yearned to burn the wrath out of every chapter,
And water the love in every verse.
Water the love in every verse.

Dereconstructed.
Dereconstructed, y’all.

They wanted meth labs and mobile homes.
They wanted moonlight and magnolias.
We gave them songs about taking your own damn stand
In spite of those who’d define and control you.

Dereconstructed.
Dereconstructed, y’all.


BURNPILES, SWIMMING HOLES
We’ve got satellites. We’ve got a new Tower of Babel.
We eat machines, and we wear labels.
Get off the fucking Internet, and cut off the cable.
The mind is static, but the body’s still able.

Burnpiles.
Swimming holes.

It’s quitting time—time to whoop and holler—
Can’t hardly make a dime without spending a dollar.
If you’re sick of trying, then come on and follow.
We’re going to wash ourselves in fire and water.

Burnpiles.
Swimming holes.

If I was driving nails for Mammon, I’ll tell you what I’d do:
I’d cast my hammer in the old burnpile, and I’d go swimming, too.

Burnpiles,
Swimming holes.


THE KUDZU AND THE CONCRETE
We were like to drown
In the odour of honeysuckle
And old Lincolns running rich
On Oporto-Madrid.
The pecans that would dot
The little yard our great-granddaddy cleared,
The old ragged men that would stop,
Slinging slurred words over the fence.
With a smiling nod, Granddaddy'd pick us up and tote us inside.
He’d say, "Big buddy, any good man can fall on mighty bad times."

There's a thing about
All these freight trains' trumpeting sounds
That makes hearts like ours
Hum like struck steel.
There's a thing about
Being wild and green in this careful, rusted town
That makes the dark heavy air
Sit sickly still.
Most times, hopping on here takes you to Elmwood Cemetery.
And I forget which time of day, it'll take you straight to Memphis,
Tennessee.
In the kudzu and the concrete,
I was born at the feet of the city.
In the kudzu and the concrete,
We learned to love at the feet of the city.

You can talk, talk, talk about it:
Repentance and forgiveness
And loving your neighbor as yourself.
But what the hell does that mean?
When all your neighbors look the same,
And think the same,
Or else live a couple miles
Down the rural route?

In the kudzu and the concrete,
We learned to run at the feet of the city.
In the kudzu and the concrete,
We learned to love at the feet of the city.
In the kudzu and the concrete.
I was born at the feet of the city.


THE WEEDS DOWNTOWN
I know that Birmingham gets you down,
And I guess that makes sense
When so many old friends retired,
If not expired, by the time we were twenty-three.
Getting blacked out and locked up,
Cashed out and knocked up.
Look at it that way, there ain't much for me.

But just consider the weeds downtown, and how they grow:
How the Queen Anne's Lace covers hot parking lots like snow.

I know the new architecture’s largely depressing,
And the politics are pretty regressive,
But ain’t shining a light on what’s dark
Kind of your thing?
The murder wave is abating,
And the population decline is stagnating.
If that ain’t an invitation, darling, what could it be?
Addressed right to you and me?

Consider the weeds downtown, and how they grow:
How the Queen Anne's Lace covers hot parking lots like snow.
Paris and New York don't have honeysuckle vines like the ones on 32nd
Street.

I know that Birmingham gets you down,
but look what it raised you up to be.


WHAT'S GOOD AND GONE
In the beginning was the Word, and the small naked earth heard it.
Hollers and graves were carved out, men and mounds raised up from it.
Before long, strangers crossed oceans, and double-crossed every damn body.
And before long, the mounds were laid bare, and strip malls were put on top.

And the strangers brought others in the bows of their freighter ships,
And this fearful land was built under that whining infant nation's whips.
Before long, they tried to tell these old boys down here just how to do things.
We dug in to our sin till we were drinking muddy water and eating shoestrings.

Let us now praise it—
What's good and gone,
The screen door swinging,
The porch light on.
Let us now praise it—
What's pure and past,
Folks being folks,
First being last.

And we, now, the sons of the hardened hearts who signed it all away,
And all the hardened heads who filled all those unmarked graves,
Will sip cold tea whose leaves were picked betwixt firing squads in Sudan,
Sweetened with sugar chopped by bleeding Brazilian hands, and say,
"Ain't life grand!”

Let us now praise it—
What's good and gone,
The screen door swinging,
The porch light on.
Let us now praise it—
What's pure and past,
Folks being folks,
First being last.

So, gather around all ye wicked ones who wouldn't touch the stuff
you're selling.
Come all y’all shallow-chested cowards who wheeze with pleas for proof.
Granddaddy taught unto me the difference between telling a story and
storytelling: One is bearing false witness; the other is baring more truth than the
truth.


WE DARE DEFEND OUR RIGHTS!
“We dare defend our rights.”
“Blessed are the meek.”
Unless it’s four little girls in Sunday school,
Learning how to turn the other cheek;
Or the younguns lashed with brimstone tongues
(“Boys like girls, and girls like boys.”);
Or the hijos watching Papa patted down
In the blue lights and siren’s noise.

Old pappy, can you hear it?
On the soft Southern breeze?
There’s hollering in the streets:
“We dare defend our rights.”

We're trying to work on this Holy Ghost building,
To make these children a home.
But us kids are getting restless,
And you won't even cut the front porch light on.
You've got every window boarded,
You’ve got every last door barred.
If you won't let us lay the plans on the supper table,
We'll build the thing in your front damn yard.

Old pappy, can you hear us?
On the soft Southern breeze?
There’s hollering in the streets:
“We dare defend our rights.”

Show me what you can build up.
Show me what you can burn down.
Show me what you can build up.
Show me what you can burn down.


FLAGS
Down here, we still hoist that old flag, watch it twist and flap in
the wind,
The way it did over the smacking lips and cracking whips of white men
selling black men.
Their sons carried it into battle, and died for it, from Gettysburg to Louisiana,
For the right to be buried in their own separate cemeteries
underneath that star-spangled banner.


Senior year, you could go deaf from all the talk of terrorists and
Muslim fundamentalists.
And I thought it strange in a town where so-called believers blew
up women’s clinics we had the gall to act so offended.
And when it would come time to say the Pledge in class, I would sit
my ass down at that desk.
And the only words of it I said were “under God.” I figured we were
beyond the help of anybody else.

Flags!
Flags!
Flags!

Granddaddy unfolds it like a flower after the Lord’s Prayer, humble
and quiet and still,
While the dew still lies on the grass, while the sun hides beyond
the old steel mill.
And I place my hand over my little heart, and he holds the salute
he held overseas.
And, looking up into his shining eyes, I behold a glory that I
cannot see.

Flags!
Like a drop…
Flags!
…in a bucket!
Flags!
Like dust…
Flags!
…on a scale!
Flags!
Insufficient!
Flags!
All of y’all’s nations!
Flags!
All of y’all’s flags!


MISSISSIPPI BOTTOMLAND
Where the runoff meets the coal-black sand,
And the waters of life spill forth from the belly of the land,
When that old ghost strikes up the whippoorwill choir,
Glory in your spark, and watch the river catch fire.

In the shadow of the cathedral, I watched her blue eyes spark
At the saints beaming in the windows, and singing in the park.
Through the piney curtain, across that long black lake,
The thick air that weighed her down at home here made her body sweat and shake.

So, if you find yourself down around there,

Find a place for me and mine,
Where a rebel son can make his peace,
And the folks are good and sweet and kind:

In the Mississippi bottomland.
Mississippi, y’all.
Sure enough.

When the river folds in on itself, be ye not afraid.
For, though she wanders like a lamb and crawls like a babe,
Fret not over why she floods and how she flows.
Just keep your cheek to her waters, and your wheels on the road.

So, if you find yourself down around there,
Find a place for me and mine,
Where a rebel son can make his peace,
And the folks are good and sweet and kind:

In the Mississippi bottomland.
Mississippi, y’all.
Sure enough.


DIRT TRACK
I’ve been hearing things at night in this big old house.
It ain’t just the pistols, and the frogs, and trains.
It’s a rumbling sound, rising like red-clay clouds,
From the ghosts of the Alabama Gang.

Bubba, it’s been too long
Since you sang it for the sake of the song.
Some things, once you sell them, you can’t buy back,
So I’m going to keep on working—keep it on the dirt track.
Keep on working—keep it on the dirt track.

Daddy’d watch them spit dirt from the hood of his Chevelle,
Marshall Tucker on the radio:
Good old boys turning junk into wheels of blazing fire,
Squeezing glory out of three rusty chords.

Bubba, it’s been too long
Since you sang it for the sake of the song.
Some things, once you sell them, you can’t buy back,
So I’m going to keep on working—keep it on the dirt track.
Keep on working—keep it on the dirt track.

Running that oval will teach you that
Where you start is where you’ll wind up at.
But, while the cameras were rolling,
And the crowds were growing,
They went and tore the old dirt track down.
Keep on working—keep it on the dirt track.

Track Listing

• The Company Man
  
• Dereconstructed
  
• Burnpiles, Swimming Holes
  
• The Kudzu and the Concrete
  
• The Weeds Downtown
  
• What's Good and Gone
  
• We Dare Defend Our Rights
  
• Flags!
  
• Mississippi Bottomland
  
• Dirt Track