The Murder Mystery

(album: The Velvet Underground - 1969)

[Left voice:]
Candy-screen wrappers of silkscreen fantastic, requiring memories both lovely and guiltfree, lurid and lovely with twilight of ages, luscious and lovely and filthy with laughter, laconic giggles, ennui fort the passions, in order to justify most spurious desires, rectify moments, most serious and urgent to hail upon the face of most odious time, requiring replies most facile and vacuous with words nearly singed, with the heartbeat of passions, spew forth with the grace of a tart going under subject of a great concern, noble origin

[Right voice:]
Denigrate obtuse and active, verbs, pronouns, skewer the sieve of the optical sewer, release the handle that holds all the gates up, puncture the eyeballs that seep all the muck up, read all the books and the people worth reading and still see the muck on the sky of the ceiling

[Left voice:]
Please raise the flag, rosy red carpet envy
English used here; this messenger is nervous
It's not fun at all out here in the hall

[Right voice:]
Mister Moonlight, succulent smooth and gorgeous
Isn't it nice? We're number one and so forth
Isn't it sweet being unique

[Left voice:]
For screeching and yelling and various offenses, lower the queen and bend her over the tub; against the state, the country, the commitee; hold her head under the water, please, for an hour, for groveling and spewing and various offenses; puncture the bloat with the wing of a sparrow, the inverse, the obverse, the converse, the reverse, the sharpening wing of the edge of a sparrow, for suitable reckonings too numerous to mention, as the queen is fat, she is devoured by rats; there is one way to skin a cat or poison a rat; it is here forth, hear to three, forthirightly stated

[Right voice:]
Relent and obverse and inverse and perverse and reverse the inverse of perverse and reverse and reverse and reverse and reverse and reverse and chop it and pluck it and cut it and spit it and sew it to joy on the edge of a cyclop and spin it to rage on the edge of a cylindrical minute

[Left voice:]
Put down that rag simpering, callow and morose
Who let you in? If I knew, then I could get out
The murder you see is a mystery to me

[Right voice:]
Dear Mister Muse, fellow of wit and gentry
Medieval ruse filling the shallow and empty
Fools that duel, duel in pools

[Left voice:]
To Rembrandt and Oswald, to peanuts and ketchup, sanctimonious sycophants stir in the bushes, up to the stand with your foot on the Bible; as king, I must order and constantly arouse, if you swear to catch up and throw up and up-up, a king full of virgin and kiss me and spin it, excuse to willow and wander, dark wonders divest me of robes, sutures, Harry and pig meat, the fate of a nation, rests hard on your bosoms, the king on his throne, puts his hand down his robe, the torture of inverse and silkscreen and Harry, and set the tongue squealing the reverse and inverse

[Right voice:]
Tantalize poets with visions of grandeur, their faces turn blue with the reek of the compost, as the living try hard to retain what the dead lost, with double-dead sickness from writing at what cost and business and business and reverse and reverse and set the brain reeling the inverse and perverse

[Left voice:]
Objections suffice apelike and tactile bassoon
Oboeing me cordon the virus' section
Off to the left is what is not right

[Right voice:]
English arcane, tantamount here to frenzy
Passing for me, lascivious elder passion
Corpulent filth disguised as silk

[Left voice:]
Contempt, contempt, and contempt for the boredom, I shall poison the city and sink it with fire, for cordless and Harry and ape-pig and scissor, the messenger's wig seems fraught with desire, for blueberry picnics and pince-nez and magpies, the messenger's skirt, would you please hook it higher, for children and adults, all those under ninety, how truly disgusting. Would you please put it down? A stray in this fray is no condom worth saving, as king, I'm quite just, but it's just quite impossible, a robe and a robe and a robe and a bat, no double-class inverse could make lying worth dying

[Right voice:]
With cheap simian melodies, hillbilly outgush, for illiterate ramblings, for cheap understanding, for misunderstranding, the simple, the inverse, the compost, the reverse, the obtuse and stupid, and business and business, and cheap stupid lyrics, and simple mass reverse while the real thing is dying

[Left voice:]
Exit the pig, enter the owl and gorgeous
King on the left, it on the right and primping
Adjusting his nose as he reads from his scroll

[Right voice:]
Folksy knockwurst, peel back the skin of French
And what do you find? Follicles intertwining
Succulent prose wrapped up in robes

[Left voice:]
Off with his head, take his head from his neck off, requiring memories both lovely and guiltfree, put out his eyes, then cut his nose off, sanctimonius sycophants stir in the bushes, scoop out his brain, put a string where his ears were, all the king's horses and all the king's men, swing the whole mess at the end of the wire, scratch out his eyes with the tip of a razor, let the wire extend from the tip of a rose, Caroline, Caroline, Caroline, oh! but retains the remnants of what once was a nose, pass me my robe, fill my bath up with water

[Right voice:]
Jumpsuit and pigmeat and making his fortune, while making them happy with the inverse and obverse and making them happy and making them happy with the coy and the stupid, just another dumb lackey who puts out the one thing while singing the other, but the real thing's alone and it is no man's brother

[Left voice:]
No one knows no nose is good news and senseless
Extend the wine, drink here a toast to selfless
Ten-year-old port is perfect in court

[Right voice:]
Safety is nice, not an unwise word spoken
Scary bad dreams made safe in lovely songs
No doom or gloom allowed in this room

[Left voice:]
Casbah and cascade and rosehip and feeling, cascade and cyanide, Rachaminoff, Beethoven, skull-silly wagon and justice and perverse and reverse the inverse and inverse and inverse, blueberry catalog, questionable earnings, hustler's lament and the rest will in due cry, to battle and scramble and browbeat and hurt while chewing on minstrels and choking on dirt, disease please seems the order of the day, please the king, please the king, please the king day, casbah and cascade and rosehip and feeling, point of order, return the king here to the ceiling

[Right voice:]
Oh, not to be whistled or studied or hummed or remembered at nights when the eye is alone, but to skewer and ravage and savage and split with the grace of a diamond then bellicose wit, to stun and to stagger with words as such stone, that those who do hear cannot again return home

[Left voice:]
Razzamatazz, there's nothing on my shoulder
Lust is a must, shaving my head's made me bolder
Will you kindly read what it was I brought thee?

[Right voice:]
Hello to Ray, hello to Godiva and Angel
Who let you in? Isn't it nice, the party?
Aren't the lights pretty at night?

[Left voice:]
Sick leaf and sorrow and pincers not scissors, regard and refrain from the daughters of marriage, regards for the elders and youngest in carriage, regard and regard for the inverse and perverse and obverse, and diverse, of reverse and reverse, regard from the sick, the dumb, and the camel from pump's storing water, like brain is too marrow to x-ray and filthy and cutting and then peeling to skin and to skin and to bone and to structure to livid and pallid and turgid and structured and structured and structured and structured and structured and regard and refrain, the sick and the dumb, inverse, reverse and perverse

[Right voice:]
Contempt, contempt, and contempt for the seething for writhing and reeling and two-bit reportage, for sick with the body and sinister holy, the drown burst blue babies now dead on the seashore, the valorous horseman, who hang from the ceiling, the pig on the carpet, the dusty pale jissom, that has no effect for the sick with the see-saw, the inverse, obverse converse, reverse of reverse the diverse and converse of reverse and perverse and sweet pyrotechnics, and let's have another of inverse, converse, diverse, perverse and reverse, hell's graveyard is damned as they chew on their brains, the slick and the scum, reverse, inverse and perverse

[Left voice:]
Plowing while it's done away
Dumb and ready pig meat
Sick upon the carpet
Climb into the casket
Safe within the parapet
Sack is in the parapet
Pigs are out and growling
Slaughter by the seashore
See the lifeguard drowning
Sea is full of fishes
Fishes full of china
China plates are falling
All fall down
Sick and shiny carpet
Lie before my eyes-eyes
Lead me to the ceiling
Walk upon the wall wall
Tender as the green grass
Drink the whisky horror
See the young girls dancing
Flies upon the beaches
Beaches are for sailors
Nuns across the sea-wall
Black hood horseman raging
Swordsman eating fire
Fire on the carpet
Set the house ablazing
Seize and bring it flaming
Gently to the ground ground
Dizzy Bell Miss Fortune
Fat and full of love-juice
Drip it on the carpet
Down below the fire hose
Weep and whisky fortune
Sail me to the moon, dear
Drunken dungeon sailors
Headless Roman horsemen
The king and queen are empty
Their heads are in the outhouse
Fish upon the water
Bowl upon the saviour
Toothless wigged Laureate
Plain and full of fancy
Name upon a letterhead
Impressing all the wheat germ
Love you for a nickel
Maul you for a quarter
Set the casket flaming
Do not go gentle blazing

[Right voice:]
Sick upon the staircase
Sick upon the staircase
Blood upon the pillow
Climb into the parapet
See the church bells gleaming
Knife that scrapes a sick plate
Dentures full of air holes
The tailor couldn't mend straight
Shoot her full of air holes
Climbing up the casket
Take me to the casket
Teeth upon her red throat
Screw me in the daisies
Rip upon her holler
Snip the seas fantastic
Treat her like a sailor
Full and free and nervous
Out to make his fortune
Either this or that way
Sickly or in good health
Piss upon a building
Like a dog in training
Teach to heel or holler
Yodel on a sing song
Down upon the carpet
Tickle polyester
Sick within the parapet
Screwing for a dollar
Sucking on a fire-hose
Chewing on a rubber line
Tied to chairs and rare bits
Pay another player
Oh you're such a good lad
Here's another dollar
Tie him to the bedpost
Sick with witches' covens
Craving for a raw meat
Bones upon the metal
Sick upon the circle
Down upon the carpet
Down upon the carpet
Down below the parapet
Waiting for your bidding
Pig upon the carpet
Tumenescent railroad
Neuro-anaesthesia analog
Ready for a good look
Drooling at the birches
Swinging from the birches
Succulent Nebraska