(Once for a Thousand Years)
Once a long time ago things got so very slow
Went down to Guantanamo and built me an Alamo
Built me an Alamo down in Guantanamo
To stand for the status quo to Tierra del Fuego
Saw a land called Chile, a man named Pinochet
Who was dancing that way thanks to our CIA
Saw a ghost named Allende behaving so friendly
He was killing me gently ever so absently
Took one look at Brazil, the USA off the pill
Indigenous still to kill, still adding the bill
Saw Rio de Janeiro from the ground in a turbo
All the tinshack condos on Free Enterprise Row
Sailed to old Venezuela on the back of a white whale
Left a petroleum trail delivering the U.S. mail
Then dancing a cumbia went to Colombia
Quoting Rumi and creating Vietnamia
Cruised into Guyana on the back of a piranha
An unshaven bwana to gather the manna
Saw the old Amazon fight the personal liaison
From the side with the jam on for the battle with Mammon
Went to El Salvador found out what’s the dollar for
Fill the rich and kill the poor in a capitalist liquidating holy war
Inside new Honduras where our best people assure us
It’s safe for the tourists they’ll scarcely endure us
Just got back from new Grenada acted like the Marquis de Sade
Used tiny island for cannon fodder, killed a bunch of sons and daughters
Ran into St. Stanislaus on his way back from Panama
Reading George Bernard Shaw on his way to the Mardi Gras
Learned all about Cuba while watching the tube
A brainwashed boob sitting there in my cube
Tried to starve them out and poison their trout
That’s what we’re about since the rise of our Old South
Given a stick and carrot and forced then to bear it
Which one has more merit and which one would just tear it
Then consider it’s your mother with no choice and no druther
And the same for your brother would you choose the other
Out in the sideyard strolled the National Guard
Where the scenery is marred because justice is barred
Out in the sideyard do not let down your guard
Some Alabama wild card bayonet you real hard
Back in the frontyard all the media bards
Show you all the marked cards fill your head up with lard
Back in the front yard there are feathers and tar
Put your bod behind bar put your mind in a jar
Saw the gringos with guns fill up Greyhounds with nuns
Leave the land of the huns to sell hamburger buns
Met a man named Sam lost a gonad in Nam
Lost his nerve in Iran has a head like a frying pan
Met a great nation of sheep still fast asleep
Listening to some new creep up on top of the heap
Met a man named boy thought he was Tolstoy
Often mad and annoyed with some other paranoid
Met a history of lies of indivisible size
With footnotes and asides in whispers and cries
Met a humankind nearly out of its mind
Always out for behind taking what it can find
Met some fading dreams in some mixed-up schemes
heads dunked in a stream still trying to scream
Met an angry pacifist married to a happy fascist
Who together found bliss reading Reader’s Digest
Overheard an old gringo who’d been living as a dingo
Reinvent a war game and call it Butcher Bloc Bingo
Gringo gringo gringo all in the name of jingo
You butcher people anywhere you can learn the lingo
Uncle Sam is damned so damned for its Butcher Bloc Bingo
B is for the butchery. I is for the Ingles. N is for the Nihilism.
G is for the Gold. O is for the Oil we suck from Venezuela
Colombia and Mexico
Butcher Bloc Bingo
Soon you see where the young men go
Where they will get shot and get jungle rot
Where freedom is not there’s cheap coke and great pot
And to boot United Fruit’s corporate criminal roots
And muy mucho toot for the generals’ mucho loot
It’s colonial booty our imperial duty
It’s ready fire aim in a genocidal shame
It’s a freeze frame of guilt and sleazy blame
With specific events and specific names
It’s Butcher Bloc Bingo
It’s still cavalry versus Indians
And Calvary for peasants and nuns
A gift from the glorious pale nation
In its latest manifest dustbin mutation
It’s no wonder the peasants run
Here come the haughty free press puns
Bananas and nuns cocoa and the runs
There must be some other way to have fun
Than Butcher Bloc Bingo
Why the guaranteed calamity
and planned chaotic infamy
with zealous Christian infantry
so jealous of infinity
all counting each extremity
each with a banjo on each knee
while playing all the not-so-free
plain acting like a Yanqui
Yanqui, Yanqui, Yanqui
More stubborn than a donkey
You get the drools such able fools
And continue till you are the ghouls
Strangling your own freedom rules
And tearing down with all your tools
Gone to lengths that are so honky
Why are you like this Yanqui
Too fond of hanky panky?
Which are you Drac or Frankie
Have you lost the art or lost your heart
You’re leaving out the peaceful part
Why are you like this Yanqui
are you asking for a spanky
What makes you so blamed cranky
and not to shout but to leave no doubt
our path to war is a Southern states route
if you want to know what our wars are about
just hear the fears from a good ol boy’s mouth
it’s the enemy this and the hatreds they tout
if they don’t get wars soon just watch them all pout
peacetime for them is a long hard drought
and they’re not alone just pick up the phone
dial a number at random turn over that stone
most people believe what they most want to hear
especially the things that they most want to fear
they’ll listen all day to a rational voice
and later that night make irrational choice
and that’s how our own Confederate South
became Sherman’s Marching Yankees
that’s how our own Confederate South
became Sherman’s Marching Yankees
Butcher Bloc Bingo (Once for a Thousand Years)
Larry Piltz, 1984 & 2008
Indian Cove / Austin, Texas
