Augie March: One Crowded Hour

Now should you expect to see something that you hadn't seen
In somebody you've known since you were sixteen
If love is a bolt from the blue
Then what is a bolt but a glorified screw
And that doesn't hold nothing together.

Far from these nonsense bars and their nowhere music
It's making me sick and I know it's making you sick
There's nothing there it's like eating air
It's like drinking gin with nothing else in
And that doesn't hold me together...

And for one crowded hour you were the only one in the room
I sailed around all those bumps in the night to your beacon in the gloom
I thought I had found my golden September in the middle of that purple June
But one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin.

Now I know you like your boys who take their medicine from the bowl of a silver spoon
Who run away with the dish and scale the fish by the silvery light of the moon
Who were taught from the womb to believe till the tomb that as far as their bleeding eyes see
Is a pleasure pen meant for them, builded and rent for them, not for the likes of me
No not for the likes of you and me...

And for one crowded hour you were the only one in the room
I sailed around all those bumps in the night to your beacon in the gloom
I thought I had found my golden September in the middle of that purple June
But one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin.

O but the green-eyed harpy of the salt land
She takes into hers my hand
And she says "Boy, I know you're lying... O but then so am I!"
And to this I said
"O well."

Well put me in a cage full of lions I'll learn to speak lion, in fact I know the language well
I picked it up while I was versing myself in the languages they speak in hell
That night that silence gave birth to a baby
But they took it away to her silent dismay and they raised it to be a lady...
Now she can't keep her mouth shut...

And for one crowded hour you were the only one in the room
I sailed around all those bumps in the night to your beacon in the gloom
I thought I had found my golden September in the middle of that purple June
But one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin.

And for one crowded hour you were the only one in the room
I played a few songs for those bumps in the night, in fact I played this very tune
But you said "What is this six stringed instrument but an adolescent loom?"
And one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin.
And one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin.
And one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin.