Daily Lyric: UNDER THE URBAN ROTGUT

You don’t get nowhere there in life

When you can walk there faster than you drive

Kill yourself slowly with each passage of time

Every day you’re less and less alive

Well, you gotta love this city ‘cause it’s so damn easy to hate

Take a whiff and sniff the subway stench that makes this city great

Scrape away the grime and you’ll find something to appreciate

Under the urban rotgut

I’ve seen the city turn people into animals

I’ve seen those animals run over and left in the street

I’ve seen the human spirit grow stagnant

Then mugged in the tunnels and left to rot in the heat

Graffiti covers everything, they’ve got it down to calling it art

You won’t notice it after awhile, you tell me, once you get city smart

Ain’t no cardiacs bein’ arrested ‘cause you won’t find no heart

Under the urban rotgut

I was never one to like beans

But I sure prefer beans to big rotten apples

And you can call me a hick ‘cause of where I live

But I’m glad as hell I don’t have to put up with all your hassles

The rent may be higher here but it sure is quieter here

The taxes may be out of sight here but at least I can walk out at night here

Maybe it’s too much away to give but enough you can’t pay me to live

Under the urban rotgut

©2024 The Hesh Inc.

Graffiti covers everything, they’ve got it down to calling it art.

My attempt at Lou Reed–like urban criticism (to wit, the New York album as well as "Kill Your Sons" from Sally Can't Dance). I wrote it when I was living in Boston in the late 1980s, watching New York City from afar as it struggled under the Dinkins administration. Never recorded or performed.