Wednesday, 7 March 2018

Reminiscence of Cold-War Near-Catastrophes: BROKEN ARROW

POST #170: Sad Anti-War Satire 
ORIGINAL SONG:  "Desperado", The Eagles, 1973. "Desperado" is also the name of the second studio album recorded by the band. 
SATIRE COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio, March 2018.
SONGLINK: The same tune was used as the vehicle for a parody song posted in 2014 entitled "Macadamias"
WORDPLAY LINK: A 3-verse poem on the same theme, i.e. domestic accidents related to nuclear weapons in the U.S., has just become available (March 2019) on our sister blog "Edifying Nonsense" - see this recent post.



BROKEN ARROW

(to the tune of "Desperado")

"Broken Arrow" - Why don't we drop the pretenses
The Department of Defense has hidden truth til now.
Hardened warheads (or just training simulation),
And the trigger didn't detonate the payload somehow.

We're talking Cold War '58, and a farm near Florence in our rural state.
Air pocket, training crew, bomber overhead.
They lost control of a big device
A nuclear explosion wouldn't be nice.
Had it triggered, folks in Florence'd all be dead.

"Broken Arrow" - from the heavens bomb tumbled.
When A-bombs are fumbled, there's no time for alarm.
Flattened farmhouse, and left a 30-foot crater, but
No plutonium detonater, so 'no serious harm'.

Just months before, off the Georgia shore, two Air Force planes collided;
Never found, an H-bomb ditched into the sea.
Plutonium capsule had been removed (official account's not yet disproved)
Near Tybee Island, the device rests quietly.

Broken Arrows - there are dozens of examples.
The evidence is ample, we should close off this gate.
World leaders, we're needing
Diplomatic moderation.
Let's halt reckless provocation, reckless provocation,
Let's stop arms proliferation before it's too late.


UKULELE-FRIENDLY VERSION (and guitar, too!)

(Click on any chord-chart slide to move to 'song-presentation mode'; then navigate through thumbnails at bottom of page.)

Specifics for C-tuned ukulele:
Am7 = 0000 (or 0030);  Gm6 = 0201;  Bm7 = 2222;  E7sus = E11= 2202; A7 = 0100;  F#m = 2120; A7sus = 2230














ORIGINAL SONG-LYRICS
















WORDPLAY LINK: 
For wordplay (palindromes, anagrams, eggcorns, creative cartography, etc.) and silly poetry (polished limericks), see our sister blog "EDIFYING NONSENSEhere

No comments:

Post a Comment