Songs of Days Gone By 03 - Journey to the Bottom of the Dresser

Download Journey_to_the_Bottom_of_the_Dresser.mp3

When stuck one night for a song topic, I reached out onto the early interwebs (this was the 90s after all) and asked a friend for an idea. Their response was "fashion". The following was written from that spark.

Journey to the Bottom of the Dresser

A jury of my peers strung a wire through my neck
and hung me from the gallow’s pole behind the death camp’s folding door.
The musty smell pervaded through my skin and overwhelmed
all senses left remaining, slowly fading, slipped down to the floor.

Ostensibly motionless dust gathers high on my remains
enshrined beneath the refuse.  I must wait an endless day
Denied the rite and ritual prescribed to those that left me here.
I hearken to nostalgic times in purple haze - the glory years.

I am a cotton blend, ¾ sleeved, technicolour concert shirt.
My arms are white, my torso black, with tour dates on the back.
I’ve smelled like weed for fifteen years
occassionally obscured by beer
and waiting for the Judas Priest reunion.

Pancaked between the legions of the underused and frayed,
I shuffle out a well-worn rhythm long past over-played.
Left for dead but for that one cold October night
When the air tore in and with a grin I boogied under blacklight.

I’m brown bell-bottomed corduroys with patches at the knees.
In my pocket folded over ticket from a Frampton show.
Grass stains creeping up my leg
from that night we dragged the keg
down into the woods behind the schoolyard.

We used to be so cool
Underneath the party lights our funky undulations ripped the night apart
We just forgot the rules
That evolution obsolescence manic-depressed coalesced to disappearance

Hung out and folded, scrunched up in ball under
miles of memories, stretched out like a pall over
indecent histories and chemical mysteries.
Remember when we were the in-thing?

Packed into a trunk tucked underneath the stairway
Buried under Twister and a ragged box of Payday
I’m the metal studded jacket and the scuffed-up cowboy boots
I’m a feathered white fedora with a polyester suit
I’m the transfer t-shirts with the Fonz, Sweathogs, and Monster movies
I’m not as think as you stoned I am, but baby I feel groovy

I’m banished to the dustbowl of undying never-ending:
Asynchronistic fashion faux pas swinging to and fro.
Let callous daring bring us back
to help ignore Blackwell’s attack,
and so our minds dissolving into fabric.