Lyrics to "The Belle of Avenue A" by The Fugs

I couldn’t find the lyrics to this song anywhere online and I thought they were hilarious. So I did my best to figure them out as an act of public service. I guess this song is from 1969 and I can literally smell it. The vivid descriptors and hyper specific references to era-specific objects truly entranced me. I loved how I never knew for sure when the refrain will come around again.

“The Belle of Avenue A” Song Lyrics by The Fugs

This is a song about a man from Junction City, Kansas

A truck driver for the Red Ball Express

who decides he has to go the Lower East Side to get some Hippie Nookie.

It's called "The Belle of Avenue A"

He was just a lonely truck driving man driving all night long

but did he know how soon his tears would fall for the Belle of Avenue A?

He drove through the tunnel in his big Mack truck

driving hard from Kansas

He told all his buddies at the Junction City Truckstop

he was gonna get some hippie nooookie

but did he know how soon his tears would fall for the Belle of Avenue A?

He saw her standing in a midnight-blue lace gown

He saw her standing in a midnight-blue lace gown

He could see her pretty naked nipples under the mesh

and she had a button, "Love is God", pinned to her sleeve

and he started talking to her in hieroglyphic hitchhikes (??)

and he told her she was the prettiest girl he'd ever seen

waving a wand of incense

burnin on Avenue A

Well his heart was beatin like a bumpy butterfly

his stomach was an empty fire

but did he know how soon his tears would fall for the Belle of Avenue A?

Hey they walked together talkin, and she reached out to hold his hand

and he trembled with joy as she scratched his lifeline

with her silver Tibetan fingerstall

and she asked him to come up to her house

and he leaped up her steps like they was on fire

and she had an Indian hemp plant blooming on the windowsill

an electric toothbrush by the bed

and on the stroboscope was a tiny push up bra

made from the eyelids of an elephant.

He was just a lonely truck driving man

driving all night long

but did he know how soon his tears would fall for the Belle of Avenue A?

They kissed! And passed between their mouths a silver-tounged marble

and he went out of control.

Fell to his knees

and she touched his zipper

and recited a sex charm from The Book of The Dead

and she caressed him with her feet

and somehow she got his Levi's off with her toes

and then she wriggled out of her lace

covering herself with Reddi-wip in a spiraling flourish

and she stood there and she had a white pebble in her navel

and she said to the lonely truck driver:

"Love me and pray to my body

Love me and pray to my body"

and the lonely truck driver to her in reply did say:

"I don't want no other love

I'll be true to you

you're the prettiest gal I've ever seen

my Belle of Avenue A"

She lay back into the zebra-skin rope harness

and pulled her truck driver lover

down into her entwining arms

and she wrapped herself around with hundred of bright ribbons

and she beamed in on him with a tube torque

and he painted pretty prairie flowers on her stomach

with a suma (i) brush

and later on they lay in a bathtub of Mazola oil

and final he grew exhausted and fell asleep

in her lovin' arms

while she stared onward into the night

drinking from her Aramaic chalice

and thrilling herself with an onyx-handled tapir snout

He told all his buddies at the Junction City Truckstop

he was gonna get some hippie nooookie

but did he know how soon his tears would fall for the Belle of Avenue A?

When he woke up he told her he loved her

and that he wanted to live with her forever and ever

and she looked at him

and she held his hand

and she dealt out the tarot cards

and she studied I-Ching for many minutes

and she asked him what his sign was

and finally, looking deep into his eyes she held his hand and said:

"It's not in the cards

all things say 'Adios'

and the purple flower

s and the green flower

s melt in the void."

Well he reeled in his dick and he headed for the door

filled with an awful love-

sheee - she can suck on a purple donut buddy I'm gonna head for home-

but the misty tears fell down his face.

He drove through the turnpike and he headed South

driving hard for Kansas

But the misty tears fell down his face for the belle of Avenue A

Yes the misty tears fell down his face for the belle of Avenue A.

He never thought the tears would ever stop for his

midnight

lace dress

incense

goddess

The Belle of Avenue A.

Verbs!

I didn’t give verbs much consideration before. They were a part of speech, like any other. This all changed on a sunny autumnal day in the New York New Jersey area. I felt inspired to bring my writing students on an adventure around campus. I entreated them to “find words in the wild”. With pen and paper we traipsed around Montclair State University collecting language.

The most fascinating part of this exercise was what happened when I asked them to collect verbs. Have you ever looked at the world in this way? Observed the processes about you? The things doing things on their way from birth to decay? Or is there a constant flow of energy, that takes the shape of nouns from time to time? What are verbs? What is verbing?

I loved the experience of gathering verbs from the ground, from people, from buildings humming with life. So much is in motion, even in a quiet place. I am fascinated by the way we chop up the material world into smaller parts. The English language is a shoddy representative of what is really going on. That is especially true in The United States of America, where indigenous languages exist to better fit the place they are from. They have been silenced. They are in resurgence.

Indigenous People’s Day is tomorrow. I am grateful for that. In my verbal quest the other day, I remembered my beginning study of Twulshootseed language. I remembered how that language centers around verbs, processes. It’s so much more fun! English declares things dead. Which is so weird. Because everything is verbing.

I was researching Birkin Bags. They are these exclusive handbags that you can’t even buy if you walk into the Hermès Store, the luxury brand which sells them. No. You must get on some kind of waitlist, then fork over $20,000 to $200,000 dollars. What makes these bags special are rare leathers used in their manufacturing. But Birkins are on their way to the grave. They can’t even last that long. Not really. Everything’s decaying. That’s the lesson of fall.

I’ll never forget living in Bulgaria. The cars under communism were called LADAs. When I lived in that country in 2009-2010, these little old cars were ubiquitous. I remember seeing one in a field. My host told me that the LADAs were made of an organic material that sheep love to munch. The sheep were eating the cars. I watched them.

I loved that. There is no permanence. Permanence is a lie. It is a state we like to believe in. It is an essential fantasy that aids in the selling of products. Hermès declares that, unlike other bags, the Birkin will never lose its value. It’s one of those most rare of objects: it gains value as it ages.

Says who? Who decides that the ten-year-old painter is a prodigy? That the apartment worth $1500 a month in May is worth $3500 in September? We do our damndest to put prices and time constraints on process. An apartment is just air doing apartment things. Is just earth doing apartment things. God bless affordable housing. God bless cheap rent. This world of prices is out of control, and we all know it.

I walked down the street the evening after my verb class. There is nothing prettier than my neighborhood at dusk in early October. I saw the lights coming through the windows of an ornate historic apartment building, and I saw the blueing sky, and the mid-century government housing with its windows aglow, and the tree tops shimmering their final green leaves, and I saw this whole scene with new eyes. For I saw verbs before I saw things.

The world vibrated, hummed, shifted, expressed itself in activity. What a pleasant surprise. To catch a glimpse of subtle changes. To focus not so much on the what but the how. I spend more time doing nothing these days. Staring into space. It is work to retain autonomy over my attention. Attention itself has been chopped up and commodified. That most precious of processes, that most sacred of verbs, to be, how can I reclaim you? How can I hold you close?

If you are reading this, please take some time today to stare at the world, just as it is. Nothing to claim, nothing to do, just watch time going on. I’ve feel I’ve stumbled on a pot of gold. To be able to bear witness to the secret flows of time and space, but for an instant, that is a pleasure being extracted from us people every single day.

Pay attention to the verbs. What is happening around you right now? Put attention there. It’s a luscious experience. Happy fall.