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Writer's pictureSam Baker

Day 27 isolation- naked as the eyes of a clown

The news from the outside is grim. I can take just the headlines this morning. The details of life during the plague are too much to read this early in the day. A day when spring is relentless. The beauty almost too much. It is difficult to hold such beauty and such sadness.


Doctors and ethics people on the east coast are deciding who gets a ventilator. Who lives. Who dies. Who has value? Who does not? A rest home in texas- its elderly population infected- are given an unproven drug. Where have I heard of that before? A captive vulnerable population used as test rabbits? what can go wrong with that?


And on my sadness list this morning. The plague. took John Prine. I have spent a lifetime studying his simplicity. Never a dancer- he was always a three right jab set up then a lighting and left thunder uppercut.


That’s the way that the world goes round.


I know a guy got a lot to loose

pretty nice fellow kind of confused

muscles in his head

never been used

thinks he owns half of this town

he starts drinking heavy gets a big read nose

beats his old lady with a rubber hose

takes her out to dinner buys her new clothes

that’s the way that the world goes round

that’s the way the world goes round

you’re up one day

the next you’re down

a half an inch of want

you think you’re gonna drown

that’s the way that the world goes round

sittin in my bath tub counting my toes

radiator broke

water froze

got stuck in the ice without my clothes

naked as the eye of a clown

crying ice cubes hoping i would croak

the sun come through the window

ice all broke

stood up and laughed thought it was a joke

thats the way that the world goes round


that’s the way the world goes round

you’re up one day

the next you’re down

there’s a half an inch of wanter

you think you’re gonna drown

that’s the way that the world

goes round


lyrics by the late great John Prine

go in peace John


naked as the eyes of a clown...



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