Expecting Rain

Sorrow covers you up like a cape

The icy wind that's in your eye.

The geometry of innocence, flesh on the bone

They tell me revenge is sweet and from where they stand, I'm sure it is.

Do you ever wonder just what God requires?

Freedom just around the corner for you
but with the truth so far off,
what good will it do?

It's true I can't recall San Francisco at all
I can't even remember El Paso, honey

Through hostile cities and unfriendly towns
Thirty pieces of silver, no money down
(with a nod to T. S. Eliot, the Gospel of Matthew, and Chuck Berry)

The emptiness is endless, cold as the clay
You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way

I bit into the root of forbidden fruit
With the juice running down my leg
(with a nod to the Book of Genesis and Robert Johnson)

where her memory is protected
Where the angels voices whisper

the endless road and the wailing of chimes

Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin' ship

Little rooster crowin’, there must be something on his mind

Every time I hear the crack of a whip my blood runs cold, I remember on the slave ships how they brutalized my very soul, today they say that we are free only to be chained in this poverty. Good god I think it's illiteracy, it's only a machine that makes money

treacherous young witches were handing out the flowers that I’d given to you

take care of all your memories
said Mick
for you cannot relive them

As the mornin’ light breaks open, the Greek comes down
And he asks for a rope and a pen that will write

All in a dream, all in a dream; the loading had begun

I guess this all depends on whether you're holding the poetry for the diction and use of syllable of the line of words and the effect they give off, or the subtext and meaning behind them that hold the poetry. For instance, "hunted like a crocodile ravaged in the corn" is a great sting of words and a great use of simile to describe the narrator's feelings, but in my opinion does not hold up to the depth of metaphor used in something like the final verse of Simple Twist of Fate:

People tell me it's a sin
To know and feel too much within
I still believe she was my twin
But I lost the ring
She was born in spring
But I was born too late
Blame it on a simple twist of fate

That floored me when I first heard it, and still does. Never mind "through the mad mystic hammering and the wild ripping hail, the sky cracked it's forms in naked wonder", which is, whilst pretty in it's diction, does nothing really beyond describing a weather event in Rimbaudian imitation; I'm getting tired of listening to the emptiness of a lot of Dylan's mid-60s lyrics in all their beatnik poetics. As Capote once said of Kerouac: "that's not writing; that's just typing."

put the blade to the heat
take the motherless children off the street
& place them at the feet of a harlot

masters of the bluff and masters of the proposition

Everybody must give something back for something they get

My patron saint is a-fighting with a ghost
He's always off somewhere when I need him most

She's everything I need and love but I can't be swayed by that

I just got to thank you
once again
for making your prayers known
unto heaven for me
and to you, always, so grateful
I will forever be

I’ll give you more gold
than your apron strings can hold
if you’ll only let your hair hang low

Half asleep near the stars
with a small dog licking your face

Puts her hands in her back pockets - Bette Davis style.