≡ Menu

From the New Book of Prophets: Cohen’s The Future — “Give me Christ or give me Hiroshima.”


The blizzard of the world Has crossed the threshold And it’s overturned the order of the soul

What does he know? Take him at his word.

How does he know?

“I’m the little Jew that wrote the Bible.”

Give me back my broken night
My mirrored room, my  secret life
It’s  lonely here
There’s no one left to torture
Give me absolute control
Over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby
That’s an order!

Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that’s left
And stuff it up the hole
In your culture
Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
I’ve seen the future, brother
It is murder

Things are going to slide (slide) in all directions
Won’t be nothing (won’t be)
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it’s overturned
The order of the soul

When they said (they said) repent (repent), repent (repent)
I wonder what they meant
When they said (they said) repent (repent), repent (repent)
I wonder what they meant
When they said (they said) repent (repent), repent (repent)
I wonder what they meant

You don’t know me from the wind
You never will, you never did
I’m the little Jew
Who wrote the Bible
I’ve seen the nations rise and fall
I’ve heard their stories, heard them all
But love’s the only engine
Of survival

Your servant here, he has been told
To say it clear, to say it cold
It’s over, it ain’t going any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
You feel the devil’s riding crop
Get ready for the future: It is murder

Things are going to slide (slide) in all directions
Won’t be nothing (won’t be)
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it’s overturned the order of the soul

When they said (they said) repent (repent), repent (repent)
I wonder what they meant
When they said (they said) repent (repent), repent (repent)
I wonder what they meant
When they said (they said) repent (repent), repent (repent)
I wonder what they meant

There’ll be the breaking of the ancient Western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There’ll be phantoms, there’ll be fires on the road
And the white man dancing
You’ll see your woman hanging upside down
Her features covered by her fallen gown
And all the lousy little poets coming round
Trying to sound like Charlie Manson
Yeah the white man dancing

Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
Give me Christ
Or give me Hiroshima
Destroy another fetus now
We don’t like children anyhow
I’ve seen the future, baby: It is murder

Things are going to slide (slide) in all directions
Won’t be nothing (won’t be), nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it’s overturned
The order of the soul

When they said (they said) repent (repent)
Repent (repent)
I wonder what they meant
When they said (they said) repent (repent), repent (repent)
I wonder what they meant
When they said (they said) repent (repent)
Repent (repent)
I wonder what they meant
When they said (they said) repent (repent)
Repent (repent)

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Dirk January 8, 2022, 9:18 AM

    Nice! Thank you.

    VI

  • James ONeil January 8, 2022, 9:37 AM

    This is that future, baby: and it’s

  • Richard January 8, 2022, 9:43 AM

    As a result of the never ending, world-wide, shit show we are all being compelled to endure, I became nostalgic several days ago for the good old days of Mutually Assured Destruction. I tried to recall if I had been fearful as a child of the world coming to a thermonuclear end, and could not remember ever feeling so.
    Nor, do I recall doing any of the “duck and cover” drills in any of my elementary classrooms.
    I was 10 years old when Slim Pickens – after hair-lipping everyone down on Bear Creek – rode the bomb down on his secondary target. I still laugh my ass off every time I see the superb movie, Dr Strangelove is.
    The point of my reminiscence is that, despite the godlessness of Communism, the two super powers of that era had enough respect and fear for the fragility of life, that could be erased due to an intemperate moment’s decision undertaken by either or both parties. The lessons and horrors of World Wars l and ll, provided guidance for decision makers on both sides.
    Today, most don’t remember our last war against the Main Enemy, in Vietnam. Violence in warfare has been sanitized to “surgical” airstrikes. Unborn children killed in the womb aren’t human beings at all. And there seems to me to be, a pervasive “f**k around, out find out” attitude, regarding anyone who dares break cadence with the Marching Morons. Anybody who is not of the body, must be cancelled.
    So yeah, I get where Cohen is coming from. The horrors of the past could at least be rationalized to an extent. There was a threshold that sane people would not cross.
    Not so much these days.
    Hell, today, I feel like i”m living my life in exile, surrounded by people I neither recognize, nor have any desire to understand.

    • Mike Austin January 8, 2022, 11:59 AM

      I remember MAD and “duck and cover”. And I recall the panic during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Fun times. I would watch “Dr. Strangelove” back to back with “Fail Safe” to try to increase my paranoia. It worked.

      The era of MAD had no characters like Biden and his acolytes. I could never trust such vermin with anything like the delicate precision of MAD.

      Half of the population of American I neither understand nor recognize as kinsmen. They are as foreign as Serbians. They have made it plain that people like me belong in camps: vaccinated, subdued, quiet and enslaved. Ok then. Let’s get this show on the road.

  • jd January 8, 2022, 9:48 AM

    He was quite the poet and I loved his singing on “Austin
    City Limits” which we used to watch in bed after retiring. I wrote
    him a letter once asking if he had any extra guitars lying
    around for my son. He didn’t send one but he answered
    the letter from his mountaintop cabin.

  • Mike Austin January 8, 2022, 9:51 AM

    “Give me Christ Or give me Hiroshima…”

    At the end of the world those who had chosen the former will avoid the latter. Those who had chosen poorly will not.

  • Terry January 8, 2022, 10:19 AM

    I had not prior, read the lyrics to this Cohen song.

    Thank you for posting.

  • Jack January 8, 2022, 11:38 AM

    Although I still have a tough time thinking a lot of positive stuff about him Cohen did well with that one; what an unfortunate reality.

  • gwbnyc January 8, 2022, 11:39 AM

    guy creeps me.

    • ghostsniper January 8, 2022, 1:19 PM

      same here

      • gwbnyc January 8, 2022, 4:08 PM

        +1

  • jwm January 8, 2022, 8:04 PM

    This happens altogether too often. I get a song in my head, and then I turn on the desktop, click over to AD, and there it is. It’s been a trying time around here. All day long, the tunes in my head were bouncing between “The Future”, and “Hallelujah”. I got home this afternoon, clicked on AD, and here it is.
    I read through the lyrics on “The Future”. I know most of it from memory. The song is too grim, too intense, too damn real, and it just isn’t what I want to feed on right now. Went over to yootoob, and had to grit my teeth through five seconds of ad, to listen to “Hallelujah”. Got me all misty, so I played it again.

    JWM

    • John the River January 9, 2022, 6:16 AM

      After they get us used to ‘five seconds of ad’ then it’ll be ten seconds. And so on.
      China, Twitter, Youtube and Facebook; I’ve only completely avoided Facebook.

  • KCK January 10, 2022, 6:22 AM

    Greetings, fellow travelers. This morning I’m #@!-gaming the front yard for when the Covid authorities here in the Evergreen State show up to discuss involuntary detention. It’s all over the news (actually, it’s suppressed as hell and described in scare quotes as “disinformation”).
    Well, the news is that many Washingtonians will not comply with that bullshit.
    BTW, it isn’t for the vax compliance. It never was about the Jews – it was about the Nazis. You can fall athwart the law by not receiving ordered counseling, treatment, or testing, as well as not being jabbed. In Australia, we’ve observed that you may be vaxxed up the wazoo, but if they catch you having lied, or having been in contact with, or vaxxed but sick, or Aboriginal in origin, you get the camp. They came for the pig, but I was a dog.