On Elvis Presley's Birthday

I can't say that I love this place where I live

This particular geographic location

But I have grown used to it

And now I miss it when I'm away

Of course, when I was a child,

My father would take me with him

Down to the Bowery where the bums were

And in the restaurant supply stores

He would buy shiny steel refrigerators

And deadly looking stoves

While I begged him to take me

To the Navy Surpius stores on Canal Street

To buy big dead bullets

He wore a short corduroy jacket

An informal hat with a puff of feather

And talked with his hands in his pockets

Jangling change

We were driving in his Cadillac

It was Elvis Presley's Birthay

They said it on the radio

My father liked Elvis

And it was wonderful

We drove through the black neighborhoods

On Long Island's north shore

When Elvis was alive

My father was from Brooklyn

And the Depression left its mark

From picking up coal on the railroad tracks and still

He didn´t have a good word to say about

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Later, I liked elegant hotel bars

Where I could drind under F. Scott Fitzgerald skies

The coolest of the cool

I was never a child

On Elvis Presley´s birthay

With my dead father

Jangling change

This is an unreal city

You can be anybody you wanna be

When you're alone

(Elliott Murphy - "On Elvis Presley's Birthday")

La cançó no tracta sobre Elvis Presley, però m'ha semblat molt apropiada per a un dia com avui. L'aniversari del Rei. 80 anys faria, d'estar viu.