Olympia Blues

Find the clubs on Fourth Street
The Eastside, the Voyer,
Students escape brutish reality
Or looming future
Just like back home,
Kids laugh and storm the bars
Oly kids are used to the rain

Rainbows of photo-copies clog bulletin boards
“Can you be an environmentalist and eat meat?”
“Of course not,” it answers itself.
Being revolutionary means following rules
Adapting strict party lines
And wearing them like an arm band

My soaked hair hangs limp around my face
I’m cold, but at home, it’s snowing
A tightly bundled old man beckons me
Three times I gave my change to him and his dog
He knows a sucker when he sees one
He asks me again,
I lie that I'm broke
Coins jingle as I walk
How deep must compassion run?
I’ve never ordered him to get a job
Though I worked an hour
For what I gave him

I walk past slightly cold
Probably a bad person for refusing
I don’t have a bed to sleep in,
But there are blankets and a roof

Every head is a different color
Red, blue, green, purple
It makes me feel out of place,
Regular crazy with my natural color

The hipsters all give dirty looks
I’m not cool enough to live here
I’m not hardline enough
Friendship revoked by
poorly inked photocopy
from anarchist bookstore
Condemned with Hitler and Reagan
Victimizing every woman I look at.
The standard doesn’t go both ways,
For sake of propagation.
I’m terrible in so many ways
Can one more matter much?

I’m on the waterfront,
Away from the people
Rain beats sooth the bay
“Thuck! Thuck! Thuck!”

Makes you feel clean
Easy to live with myself
It rains a lot here,
Oly kids are used to it.