I don’t think Murder Mystery was ever a favourite track from this album (yes yes bought when it came out and still have my original vinyl) . . . . there were tracks that stuck out much much more (Pale Blue Eyes, I’m Beginning To See The Light, I’m Set Free and but someone posted the lyrics (poem) today and it struck me . . . more obtuse than Tarantula and an early example of stream of consciousness songwriting (Burroughs cut up anyone - junk connections?) . . . so here ’tis!
Read along and join in kiddies?
Candy screen wrappers of silkscreen fantastic, requiring memories both lovely and guilt-free(Denigrate obtuse and active verbs, pronouns)Lurid and lovely with twilight of ages, luscious and lovely and filthy with laughter(Skewer the sieve of the optical sewer)Laconic giggles, ennui for the passions in order to justify most spurious desires(Release the handle that holds all the gates up)Rectify moments most serious and urgent to hail upon the face of most odious time(Puncture the eyeballs that seep all the muck up)Requiring replies most facile and vacuous with words nearly singed with the heartbeat of passions(Read all the books and the people worth reading)Spew forth with the grace of a tart going under, subject of great concern, noble origin(And still see the muck on the sky of the ceiling)Mister moonlight(Please raise the flag)Succulent, smooth and gorgeous(Rosy red carpet envy)Isn't it nice?(English used here)We're number one and so forth(This messenger is nervous)Isn't it sweet(It's not fun at all)Being unique?(Out here in the hall)For screeching and yelling and various offenses, love, lower the Queen and bend her over the tub(Relent and obverse and inverse and perverse)Against the state, the country, the committee, hold her head under the water, please, for an hour(And reverse the inverse of perverse and reverse)For grovelling and spewing and various offences, puncture that bloat with the wing of a sparrow(And reverse and reverse and reverse and chop it)The inverse, the obverse, the converse, the reverse, the sharpening wing of the edge of a sparrow(And pluck it and cut it and spit it and sew it)For suitable reckonings too numerous to mention, as the queen is fat, she is devoured by rats(To joy, on the edge of a cyclop and spin it)There is one way to skin a cat or poison a rat, it is here forth, hear to three, forthrightly stated(To rage on the edge of a cylindrical minute)Put down that rag(Dear Mr. Muse)Simpering, callow and morose(Fellow of wit and gentry)Who let you in?(Medieval ruse)If I knew, then I could get out(Filling the shallow and empty)The murder you see(Fools that duel)Is a mystery to me(Duel in pools)To Rembrandt and Oswald to peanuts and ketchup, sanctimonious sycophants stir in the bushes(Tantalize poets with visions of grandeur)Up to the stand with your foot on the Bible, as king, I must order and constantly arouse(Their faces turn blue with the reek of the compost)If you swear to catch up and throw up and up-up, a king full of virgin and kiss me and spin it(As the living try hard to retain what the dead lost)Excuse me to willow and wander dark wonders, divest me of robes-sutures, Harry and pig meat(With double-dead sickness from writing, at what cost?)The fate of a nation rests hard on your bosoms, the king on his throne puts his hand down his robe(And business and business and reverse and reverse)The torture of inverse and silk screen and Harry and set the tongue squealing, the reverse and inverse(And set the brain reeling, the inverse and inverse)Objections suffice(English arcane)Ape-like and tactile bassoon(Tantamount here to frenzy)Oboe-ing me(Passing for me)Cordon that virus' section(Lascivious elder passion)Off to the left(Corpulent filth)Is what is not right(Disguised as silk)Contempt, contempt and contempt for the boredom, I shall poison the city and sink it with fire(With cheap simian melodies, hillbilly out-gush)For cordless and Harry and ape-pig and scissor, the messenger's wig seems fraught with desire(For illiterate ramblings, for cheap understanding)For blueberry picnics and pince-nez and magpies, the messenger's skirt, would you please hook it higher? (For mass understanding, the simple, the inverse)For children and adults, all those under 90, how truly disgusting, would you please put it down?(The compost, the reverse, the obtuse and stupid)A stray in this fray is no condom worth saving, as king, I'm quite just, but it's just quite impossible(And business and business and cheap, stupid lyrics)A robe and a robe and a robe and a bat, no double cress inverse could make lying worth dying(And simple mass reverse while the real thing is dying)Folksy knockwurst(Exit the pig)Peel back the skin of French and(Enter the owl and gorgeous)What do you find?(King on the left)Follicles intertwining(It on the right and primping)Succulent prose(Adjusting his nose)Wrapped up in robes(As he reads from his scroll)Off with his head, take his head from his neck off, requiring memories both lovely and guilt-free (Jumpsuit and pig meat and making his fortune)Put out his eyes and then cut his nose off, sanctimonious sycophants stir in the bushes(While making them happy with the inverse and obverse)Scoop out his brain, put a string where his ears were, all the King's horses and all the King's men(And making them happy and making them happy)Swing the whole mess at the end of the wire, scratch out his eyes with the tip of a razor(With the coy and the stupid, just another dumb lackey)Let the wire extend from the tip of a rose, Caroline, Caroline, Caroline, oh(Who puts out the one thing while singing the other?)But retain the remnants of what once was a nose, pass me my robe, fill my bath up with water(But the real thing's alone and it is no man's brother)Safety is nice(No one knows)Not an unwise word spoken(No nose is good news and senseless)Scary, bad dreams(Extend the wine)Made safe in lovely songs(Drink here, a toast to selfless)No doom or gloom(Ten year old port)Allowed in this room(Is perfect in court)Casbah and Cascade and Rosehip and Feeling, Cascade and Cyanide, Rachmaninoff, Beethoven(Oh, not to be whistled or studied or hummed)Skull silly wagon and justice and perverse and reverse the inverse and inverse and inverse(Or remembered at nights when the eye is alone)Bluebelly catalog, questionable earnings, hustler's lament and the rest will in due cry(But to skewer and ravage and savage and split)To battle and scramble and browbeat and hurt while chewing on minstrels and choking on dirt(With the grace of a diamond, bellicose wit)Disease please seems the order of the day, please the king, please the king, please the king day(To stun and to stagger with words as such stone)Casbah and Cascade and Rosehip and Feeling, point of order, return the king here to the ceiling(That those who do hear cannot again return home)Razzamatazz(Hello to Ray)There's nothing on my shoulder(Hello, Godiva and Angel)Lust is a must(Who let you in?)Shaving my head's made me bolder(Isn't it nice, the party?)Will you kindly read(Aren't the lights)What it was I brought thee?(Pretty at night?)Sick leaf and sorrow and pincers, net scissors(Contempt, contempt, and contempt for the seething)Regard and refrain from the daughters of marriage(For writhing and reeling and two-bit reportage)Regards for the elders and youngest in carriage(For sick with the body and sinister holy)Regard and regard for the inverse and perverse(The drown burst blue babies now dead on the seashore)And obverse and diverse of reverse and reverse(The valorous horsemen who hang from the ceiling)Regard from the sick, the dumb and the camel(The pig on the carpet, the dusty pale jizzom)From pump's storing water like brain is to marrow(That has no effect for the sick with the see-saw)X-ray and filthy and cutting and then peeling(The inverse, obverse, converse, reverse of inverse)To skin and to skin and to bone and to structure(The diverse and converse of reverse and perverse)To livid and pallid and turgid and structured(And sweet pyrotechnics and let's have another)And structured and structured and structured and structured(Of inverse, converse, diverse, perverse and reverse)And regard and refrain, and regard and refrain(Hell's graveyard is damned as they chew on their brains)The sick and the dumb, inverse, reverse and perverse(The slick and the scum, reverse, inverse and perverse)Plowing while it's done away(Sick upon the staircase)Dumb and ready pig meat(Sick upon the pulpit)Sick upon the carpet(Blood upon the pillow)Climb into the casket(Climb into the parapet)Safe within the parapet(See the church bells gleaming)Sack is in the parapet(Knife that scrapes a sick plate)Pigs are out and growling(Dentures full of air holes)Slaughter by the seashore(The tailor couldn't mend straight)See the lifeguard drowning(Shoot her full of air holes)Sea is full of fishes(Climbing up the casket)Fishes full of china(Take me to the casket)China plates are falling(Teeth upon her red throat)All fall down(Screw me in the daisies)Sick and shimy carpet(Rip upon her holler)Lies before my eyes-eyes(Snip the seas fantastic)Lead me to the ceiling(Treat her like a sailor)Walk upon the wall-wall(Full and free and nervous)Tender as the green grass(Out to make his fortune)Drink the whisky horror(Either this or that way)See the young girls dancing(Sickly or in good health)Flies upon the beaches(Piss upon a building)Beaches are for sailors(Like a dog in training)Nuns across the sea-wall(Teach to heel or holler)Black hood horseman raging(Yodel on a sing song)Swordsman eating fire(Down upon the carpet)Fire on the carpet(Tickle polyester)Set the house a-blazing(Sick within the parapet)Seize and bring it flaming(Screwing for a dollar)Gently to the ground-ground(Sucking on a fire-hose)Dizzy Bell Miss Fortune(Chewing on a rubber line)Fat and full of love-juice(Tied to chairs and rarebits)Drip it on the carpet(Pay another player)Down below the fire hose(Oh, you're such a good lad)Weep and whisky fortune(Here's another dollar)Sail me to the moon, dear(Tie him to the bedpost)Drunken dungeon sailors(Sick with witches' covens)Headless Roman horsemen(Craving for a raw meat)The king and queen are empty(Bones upon the metal)Their heads are in the outhouse(Sick upon the circle)Fish upon the water(Down upon the carpet)Bowl upon the savior(Down below the parapet)Toothless wigged Laureate(Waiting for your bidding)Plain and full of fancy(Pig upon the carpet)Name upon a letterhead(Luminescent railroad)Impressing all the wheat germ(Neuro-anesthesia analog)Love you for a nickel(Ready for a good look)Maul you for a quarter(Drooling at the birches)Set the casket flaming(Swinging from the birches)Do not go gentle blazing(Succulent Nebraska)
Lou always cited Sister Ray as companion piece and perhaps for obvious reason this was never performed live with the alternating lyrics being spoken by Lou and Sterling and the other band members joining in on a ‘chorus’ of sorts . . . . I always recall the phrase "Relent and obverse and inverse and perverse” and for some reason "Sick upon the circle, down upon the carpet”!
