Crown Of The Valley

we are the high street service trays
 coming to take you away
 pasadena 1968
 with speed on your breakfast plate
 aunt cancer calls them happy pills
 they keep her calm and cool until he leaves
 the moccasin skin obsession leather thigh
 white tennis skirt so high
 the eyes of mine are new and kind
 but the hair's not grey, it's white
 and grandfather's an ascot noose
 can't tie the tassels on his shoes
 leave me
 these are the red-eyed politics
 the cocktail revisionists
 war room rules: no wives or kids
 here men sing the boy in them
 the hedge casts heroes late across our lawn
 the valley hunt militiamen, all gone
 thought we had the lock in '54
 now the maid owns the house next door
 and what's more
 swims in the pool she used to clean
 our new king looks like a queen
 leave me
 oh god stop tearing off the roof
 of my experimental bathroom
 it's the only thing that's halfway mine
 and not for your prying and lying eyes
 the empire's melting like ice cream
 on the altar of the sun
 this skin we've stretched for centuries
 it's faded, it's fraying, it's meaningless to me