Bedlam (Edit 1)

[Brownlie]

Edit 1:



I’ve seen a bedlam house that’s stale
With sodden Tom’s in front
A color painted place of heavy air
Where drinking men are done

I had my day of lunacy
Inside and know the way
We wasted men can feel our lives
that slowly slip away.

So gather up all bedlam boys
And throw away your shame
To join with me for a moment’s whine
And plaintively exclaim!

The warring winds and elements
Will always be in fight
For blackened words were always ink
and never shining light

We men have braved the chiller air
With fragile cracking bones
We battled cold and harnessed flames
and did it all alone

We faced the lurking fiend of death
And took the devil’s bridge
Untamed we shattered pendant chains
And sealed off Tartarus

Despite our raging valor dogs
Are hounding at our heel
So we set our feet to the snake
And turn the burning wheel

Let’s toss our dusty leaflet books
and find a maudlin maid
Whose haggard hair will bear the air
With hissing gorgon snakes

But though we fight we’re doomed to lose
Our thrashing fatal clash
We crumble with the roaring wind
Bequeathed into the grass

We’ll find that maudlin maids were myths
In lashing merry tunes
So we go like bears in the air
And we all get drunk by noon

Original:



I’ve seen a modern house of bedlam, where
Tom’s in front with chipped
Up teeth and soil heavied clothes
are sodden down by scripts.

I had my day of lunacy
Inside and know the way
that wasted men can feel their lives
that slowly slip away.

You cannot cover up a cell
With smiling murals crafted
On the prison walls and paint away
A single plaguing fact

That all these bonny boys are trapped
If you heard the ticking clock
Inside then maybe you could see
What they can feel, a lock.

It’s true that prisons can be gauged
In degrees, but freedom lost
Is freedom lost and where is he
That sets his cage aloft.

So gather up all bedlam boys
And throw away your shame
To join with me for a moment’s whine
And plaintively exclaim!