Saturday 2 July 2022

Dissolution Street (a new take on Dylan's Desolation Row)

 


The King is in the counting house, eating bread and money,

He thinks if he talks like Julius Caesar, we’ll think that he is funny.

Plato has found a way to play chess, using tanks and guns

‘Who cares?’ says Henry Ford, ‘we’ll make ten thousand suns.’

John and Yoko close the curtains and get beneath the sheets

They can hear the bombs outside, falling on Dissolution Street.


The banker says to the poor man, ‘You’re helping keep things great.’

An unborn baby arrives in hell and says ‘Sorry I am late.’

Louis Braille’s lost his sight and says people keep giving him bad looks.

They say they know how to handle him, they take away his books.

King Midas tells the multitude there’s always plenty to eat

The queue at the food bank stretches down Dissolution Street


They found that the judge was lying, so the judge changed all the rules

They found gold beneath the playgrounds, so they sold off all the schools

Doctor Death went to hospital, where he met up with Dr Who

Doctor Death said he was out of cash, so he sold the hospital too.

The Sheriff of Nottingham was saying that it was honest to cheat

As he strung up Robin Hood on  the gibbet  on Dissolution Street.


The doctor’s telling me the good news, my foot won’t be falling off

The nurse is telling me I’ve got no lungs so I don’t need to to cough.

Another nurse is telling me, ‘Move!’, cos I often fall out of bed.

The doctor’s telling me more good news, he says I’m not brain dead.

The diary’s open on yesterday but I don’t know who I’ll meet

They say I’m deconditioned, now I’m on Dissolution Street.


The Queen says that it’s awful how people resent her fur coats.

The real problem she says is people arriving in small boats

They will eat every one of you, she says to you and me

The safest thing for all of us, is if we push’em into the sea

One or two can come ashore and as some kind of treat

They can be nurses or clean the floors in Dissolution Street



From the other end of the corridor, I hear a woman scream

I lean out of bed and ask the nurse, ‘Can I stay in my dream?’

He says, ‘You’re dead anyway, so you’re missing the bad weather.

This is the last place on earth where we’re all working together.’

They bring in the last machine they have, I could see my heart beat

I might be dead now, I think,  but we can leave Dissolution Street.