Lyrics and Poetry

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Save My Soul

Well, I read the only Book ‘o God,
Know all the stories from Jacob to Lot,
Listened to the preacher with all my heart,
Cause I wanna save my only soul.
And you’ll do it too if you’re smart
‘Cause Satan fries you on burning coals
Just to watch you squirm in hellfire.


Well, I’d strangle my wife with a wire.
I’d stab my first born only son,
I’d slice his neck and watch him bleed.
If ever God told me His will be done.
He drives the purpose of my life.
And the rules of Saint Paul I heed
To steer me clear of turmoil ‘n strife.
Preacher tells me, “obey the leaders.”
I listen, ‘cause I wanna save my soul.
I’ll get right with God, don’t you know?


Well, I’ll enlist to fight His war,
‘Cause the leaders tell me so.
A good believer’s the one kills more.
So, I’ll invade all the oil heathens
Just to clear my path to the heavens,
And I wanna save my only soul.
The Second Coming approaches soon,
In the Rapture I’ll be first to go.
So, you’ll ignore the raging monsoons,
Sea water rising high to the goal.
Subdue and multiply, our only hope.
And I want like hell to save my soul


© March 2003 Mark Biskeborn

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For Whom the Cow Bell Tolls

Exhaust pipes fume over the continents,
Lift the tails, spew the filth in coils,
With bovine flatulence and gas digested,
Flocking along in the tried and tested.

The sun rose up for another day
We rose, too, for the bargain.
Herds hit the road
For that same cow trail routine,
The excitement of another paycheck.
Ambitions answer to the American Dream.

Start a family, add more to the crowd,
More houses, more parking lots, more oil,
Drive in the charge of purpose so proud.
And we think we’re so damned free in cars
To the shops, malls, factories, and the bars.
To the cube-farm offices we herd despite the clouds.

The twisted, rusted habits over generations,
Loop in endless turmoil and merriment,
On bobbins of purring, whining turbines.
They ship your kids off to defend them— all spent.
For those miserably failed traditions,
That, unquestioned, agree to kill for the lies,
Then lie for all the killings, and then kill for profits.
In the name of some god, the ones in high places pray for the prize,
To their own rattle-snakes slivering, shaking tails full of gems,
Rousing us to glorious crime, a justice tortured by them.

We sing some lifting anthem to the dead.
Sing glory halleluiahs for someone’s truth that marches us to the killing.
And the singing dashes all our doubts, especially for cows so misled.
We might as well stampede through the whoops, swallowing cud without chewing,
Hiding the body-counts, mooing for the wolves.
The old dirt trail hardly stirs up dust at our hooves.

© April 2004 Mark Biskeborn

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Dance La Marinera

Inspired from "Take This Waltz" by Leonard Cohen.

In Lima, there’s a dance that sends you into life.
There’s an army of beautiful women,
And a park where the doves perch in a trance.
There’s a tree where the snakes go to lie,
And a drink called Amazon heaven.

Dance la Marinera with the barefoot beggars

I love you on a bed of mangos
In a pool at the summit of seekers
In a catacomb where the bones are sweating
In a city filled with Incas and Spanish ghosts

Dance la Marinera with its broken host

With its very own rhythms of hooves and horses
Throwing themselves into the sea

There’s a cathedral in Lima
Where your eyes lit up all the candles
There’s a bar where the men go to pray
They’ve been riding the waves of life without handles
Ah, but who scales the hills for you with a bouquet of freshly cut hay?

Dance la Marinera.

There’s a cliff where children play
Where I have to lie down with you soon
In a dream of papayas and hay
And blossoms of the afternoon.
I’ll look for what chains you’ve broken
For freedom and smiles.

Dance la Marinera, the love that travels miles.

I’ll dance it with you in Lima
I’ll wear the parouquet's feathers
And the orchid’s jungle in my hat, petals of gardenia,
My lips on the mist of your thighs.

I’ll raise my soul up to the gods
With the chanting shaman there in his smoke
And I’ll blend into the perfumes of your beauty
With my cheap guitar and hope
And you’ll show me the steps to your dance
To the clouds that you ride through the city.

Dance la Marinera, oh my love,
It’s yours to enjoy.

© May 2005 Mark Biskeborn

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Living in the Desert

Years living in the desert, I’m dried out, tough,
Air hot, ground hard, I eat snakes, vultures, rabbits.
I’ve learned to chew cactus, sleep in the rough,
My body dried, cured of modern habits.

Over the horizon I seek the exit from plans,
Explore cemeteries that no trees hide,
Walk over sacred graves, spirits hold my hand,
Listening to their whispers of life, purged of lies.

Then I walk down to the sea, sparkling gray
Thinking of some lost love, shadow in dust.
The moon rises, the tide swallows the day.
Crimsons, purples, reds, reflect the dusk.

It’s harder every day to meditate,
I keep falling under the waves,
Calling out for you in the breaks,
But all I see here are the mermaids.


© August 2009 Mark Biskeborn

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Love's Labyrinth Lost

I swam in the Seine near Notre Dame
Just to shed the scent of your perfume
But the fish nibbled my toes, mocking my doom.
They blew bubbles around the lingering tones of a fatal femme.
I dried off in the cathedral, hoping to shake off the gloom.
I prayed to the gargoyles who devoured the ribbon and bow
That I stole from your pockets years ago.
My plans foiled when I burned a locket of your hair,
As a chorus of whores chanted in tongues and altar candles lit the air,
Where they stood below a cross in need of repairs.

I poured my fears into the beggar’s cup,
The one who reigned over all Pigalle.
He ripped off his ears and strained his luck,
As he listened to the secrets of our sordid downfall.
He charged me a high price to give me advice.
He said, “Avoid misfits and stay outside cemetery walls,
Until you can put it all on ice.”
Then he sold his spot on the corner of Martyrs-Abyss.
To respectable people knowing nothing of a meaningful life.
He shaved his head and wrote self-help books, a thriving business.
Though, he swallowed meds in the dark with a blank look,
Reciting details of your diaries to a harlequin, his wife.
Just when I thought his books showed me the light,
I found him back at Pigalle, tying your chain to high-voltage lines.
And when they hauled away his body, his bones rattled and shook.
The wind howled, scented with your Chanel Nine.
The bright neons exposed how his ghost lingered to sniff the electrical pole,
As if still posed for a glimpse of your soul.

A shaman recently showed me smoke signs
He’d conjured up in a ceremony with you.
How it cost him his balance and all sense of time.
The man couldn’t stop babbling and lost his point of view.
His eyes and his nose turned red when he mentioned the ritual,
Where the mirrors in your room warped your wings.
He tore off your clothes and was found exposed out in the hall.
He probably never recovered from the screams.
Yet you stand there, a nymph in the headlights,
Victim of all your raging flights.


© March 2010 Mark Biskeborn