Category: You Can’t Stay Here

© 1974 Neal
Gladstone

Springtime Cares
Everybody out in folding chairs
Greens are steaming, sun is screaming down
Rain or shin, everybody up for wasting time
Juices flowing, love is going round
Some are looking forward to the summer
Looking white behind their Polaroids
Me and Mike are looking for a drummer
Cuz we’re painfully, gainfully unemployed
As springtime grows, everybody out in open toes
Kites are cracking, bluebirds back in town
Change the clocks, celebrate the vernal equinox
Legs are showing, ten-speeds slowing down
We’ve been waiting round for warmer weather
We’ve been wearing down in frozen gloom
Wouldn’t care if winter left forever
Cuz we’re out the door looking for things to bloom
Springtime fades everybody putting on their shades
Grass is burning, skins are turning brown
Staying cool, lots of babies splashing in the pool
Bees are buzzing, ferns are fuzzing
Fans are flipping, kids are dripping
Time for flying dandelion down.

© 1986 Neal
Gladstone

Well I went to a party in Beverly Hills
All the people were cool, hip and groovy
There were beautiful women who longed to be loved
It was just like an X-rated movie
The music started to play
And everyone got up to dance
I was taking a thread off my pants
When I saw her
She was wearing more make up than Zsa Zsa Gabor
And her beauty left something desired
But to my amazement she started to dance
Like the ovens of hell had been fired
From the moment I met her
She just kept getting better
O how could I forget her
When I saw that she knew
All the latest dances
Well I went in the bathroom to check out my hair
And I squirted some musk on my ear lobe
And when I came out she was thrashing around
Like a cat that had jumped on a wood stove
Well we danced every dance past a quarted to three
Till my legs were like neoprene rubber
And I said to myself “Gee thank God
for my health.”
As I danced with my Amazon lover

© 1986 Neal
Gladstone

You can pamper your condition
With exercise and good nutrition
You can tint that gray here
Work out twice a day here
But you know what they say dear:
You can’t stay here
You can rise to wealth and power
Reigning from your corporate tower
You can buy and sell here
Watch your profits swell here
But when they ring that bell dear:
You can’t stay here
When we were young
We always hung together
Where are you now
Positive that we would live forever
Now you’re not around
Since you’ve gone underground
You can tangle our emotion
You can bank on our devotion
You can lead the blind here
Feed us all a line here
But keep one thing in mind dear:
You can’t say here
I tried to find a valentine to send you
Where are you now
I really hope its meaning won’t offend you
Now you’re not around
Since you’ve gone underground
You can take the road to glory
Rolling Stone can write your story
You can be the one here
Who rides into the sun here
Hope you’re having fun dear
Cause you can’t stay here
Please take a number
Sing for your supper
You aint gettin younger
Sure gonna miss ya
Ya can’t take it with ya

© 1986 Neal
Gladstone

Oo happy birthday Oo how we love you
Each candle is a wish that will come true
Alt Chorus
Oo happy Birthday Make a wish
Blow out the candles, give us a kiss
Gonna take you out with us tonight
To your favorite restaurant
Gonna drink Champagne by candle light
Give you anything you want
All of us who love you so
We just want to let you know
Chorus
As we celebrate this special day
Well it isn’t hard to tell
Wouldn’t want you any other way
That the years will treat you well
All of us that you have touched
Want to show you just how much
Chorus

© 1985 Neal
Gladstone

Hello, Dear Clementine and Fritzi
It seems like ages since I wrote
But even though we’ve all be so very busy
I just had to drop you cats a note
August 4th my Tommy’s turning 7
Poor boy he thinks he’s getting gray
We have a party planned
Come join us if you can
Leave town, fly down
For the Kitty Kitty Holiday
We’re so busy making preparations
Candy’s called the caterers from Queens
We even had the woodshed stocked with church mice
For those who like that kind of thing
Norton hired the TipTop Tabby Dance Band
You know how well those cats can play
We’re looking forward to
Having a dance with you
Circle the date, come celebrate
The Kitty Kitty Holiday
We’ve ordered tuna fresh from Laguna
It’s very good this year they say
I know a lion who lives in Zion
Who says he’s dyin to keep the dogs away
(He’s really just a pussy)
Uncle Manx is flying down from Pittsburg
Lately he’s been into Chairman Meow
But when he smells
Aunt Jezabel’s lobster newburg
I doubt he’ll ask for kitty chow
You know he had distemper in December
The vets tell us he’ll be okay
He’d love to see you all
Why not give him a call
He’ll be fine in plenty of time
For the Kitty Kitty Holiday
We’ll get our dairy from Cousin Harry
He asks about you every day
He had a bad trip and almost had to quit
Just too much catnip, I’m afraid
(it really is a pity)
We took in a movie by Fellini
Up at Cannes it made the critics rave
I thought the plot was good
But not worth that howling
Tom says he’s not into Mew Wave
I guess that’s all the news that is amusing
And I’ve got this salmon to filet
We miss you very much
Be well and keep in touch
Stay cool and we’ll see you
At the Kitty Kitty Holiday

1985 Neal
Gladstone

Force feed 50 bowling balls with mud
And watch a Greek reactionary chew his cud
He lost his head and went to bed
With submarine and crew
Babe am I too crazy for you
I had a blond cadaver in for tea
We chewed the fat and tried to play Monopoly
He grew a beard and disappeared
On Baltic Avenue
Babe am I too crazy for you
A man in Michigan gave birth to a baked Alaska
They held a benefit to see if he could fly
With toothpaste in his eye
Cram a bleached salami in your ear
And dress a can of midget lips in scuba gear
If I were you and you were me
We’d both be in a zoo
Babe am I too crazy for you
I sent a ton of broken rubberbands to China
I asked a herd of baby onion rings to dance
A Harlequin Romance
I spent a week in Cleveland eating clay
And taught the Russian army how to macrame`
I took a pee in Tennessee
And nearly caught the flu
Babe am I too crazy for you

© 1983 Neal
Gladstone

I was makin a run one New Year’s Eve
Man you better believe I was fried
I was two days shy on sleep, had a gut full of concrete
And a killer migraine half a mile wide
It was snowin like a bitch, there was semi’s in the ditch
And you couldn’t tell which way as up for sure
The wind was rippin from the north and I was flippin
back and forth
Like a mama walleye tryin to shake a lure
Now my eyeballs burned like a pair of combat signal flares
And whether I could stay awake I had my doubts
But if I pulled off for a nap I might get buried in this
crap
And then it’d take a crane to pull me out
So I drank a few more rounds of pureéd coffee
grounds
And used some words I never learned to spell
By now the traction was so bad it took near everything
I had
Just to keep that heavy mother parallel
And I’m one of them crazy truckers
One of Mother Nature’s suckers
For a life as free as wind and hard as nails
I been baked and soaked and frozen
As I rolled between the oceans
And I spent a night or two in a county jail
But there’s nothin like the hummin
Of that open highway comin
And stretchin out as far as you can see
It’s a life of steak and gravy
If it doesn’t drive you crazy
The road’s the sweetest place a man can be
Now there was no way I could know as I crippled through
the snow
With my fryin eyelids clickin out Morse Code
But a Southern Central freight was steamin open throttle
straight
Toward a railroad crossing a half a mile down the road
By now my body ached for sleep like a grizzly bear in
heat
And a man can only hold out for so long
And as I passed a sign that read: “Railroad Crossing” just
ahead
My lids dropped one last time and I was gone
CHORUS
I don’t know how long I was out or what that nightmare
was about
But some ungodly rumble brought me back
And I pried open my eyes just in time to realize
I was sprawlin jack-knifed clean across the track
A screamin airhorn split the night as my knuckles twisted
white
And the sound of thunder turned my plasma sour
And through my icy pane I saw a mother-loving train
Bearin down on me at 60 miles an hour
Well I quivered like a beetle on a bug collector’s needle
And I whimpered as my backbone turned to slime
And when I saw them sparks appear the message came home
loud and clear
Only an act of God could stop that train in time
Then that engine filled my eyes like a 90-story high-rise
And I heard a sound no man has lived to tell
Then my tractor caught the force of a hundred thousand
horse
And I rode that screamin diesel into hell

1985 © Neal
Gladstone

You know it’s hard
to imagine
That a girl like you
Could want a bad baby boy like me
Yes it’s hard to imagine
Such a thing could ever be, yes indeed
You’re the top of the rock,
The toast of the town
The peach at the top of the tree
Yes it’s hard to imagine
For a bad baby boy like me
You know it’s hard to imagine
That my luck would change
Just when things was looking bleak
It’s hard to imagine
We was dancing cheek to cheek
(so to speak)
You’re the top of the rock,
The toast of the town
The smile on the bride-to-be
Yes, it’s hard to imagine
For a bad baby boy like me
I used to be bad, I used to get mad,
I used to burn constantly
But I didn’t know
Life could be so lovely
Now I’m cooling down,
Now that I found
Heaven was made for two
And I’ve got a feeling
That my bad baby days are through
You know it’s hard to remember
What my life was like
Before I gazed into your eyes
Yes, it’s hard to remember
When I ever felt so high, my oh my
You’re the top of the rock,
The toast of the town,
The sweet in the harmony
Yes it’s hard to remember
For a bad baby boy like me