Tickling the DRAGON's Tail!

[Yesterday, I posted one of the quickest and easiest song/poems I have ever had the good fortune to compose. Today is one of the longest and most difficult. As I explain below, the idea was seeded when I was about 12 years old and read about the death of Louis Slotin. The chorus came about ten years ago and the riff that eventually became the background for the verses about two years ago and the verses themselves earlier this summer.]

I lie upon my bed at night and stare into the light.
These sights I see, can they really be causing our misery?
Perhaps it serves no lasting use to explain it all to you,
But it's the things that we all do that are

Tickling the Dragon's Tail!
Listen to the night, listen to the night winds wail!

It's kind of strange don't you think? Our world totters on the brink
Of global catastrophe and Endless, Total War…
But how is it we all react? We go out and shop for more
Of them Shiny Things that Glow in the Dark and

Tickling the Dragon's Tail!
Listen to the night, listen to the night winds wail!

If we keep on going down the road we're on, there won't be no turning back!
Pretty soon the tarmac will crack and the zeroes will attack!
The world will go down to the shades when the roses all fade,
And we'll all sleep in the bed we made by

Tickling the Dragon's Tail!
Listen to the night, listen to the night winds wail!

There are those who say a better day will come if we only pray.
The "Lord" will come and kiss our thumb and smile and wipe our bum.
I swear by hope and faith and love and by the Lord Above
It ain't a-gonna happen because we've been

Tickling the Dragon's Tail!
Listen to the night, listen to the night winds wail!

[ When I was about 12 years old, I read about Louis Slotin who died in 1946. He was a scientist involved in practical research needed to make the kind of bomb where two hemispheres of plutonium are slammed together in a "shotgun" device, the mechanism in "Little Boy", the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The experiment, whihch he had done at least a dozen times was known as "tickling the dragon's tail". In it's simplicity, the experiment was to move two hemispheres if beryllium-coated plutonium closer and closer together, until they almost touched. This gave valuable information on how a chain reaction starts, enabling them to make an atomic bomb with more "bang for the buck".

One afternoon, the tool he was using to push the plutonium slipped, the hemispheres touched and the room was filled with blue light – he had awakened the dragon!. Shouting for everyone to get down, he pushed the death metal apart with his bare hands. He died nine days later, in the terrible agony allotted to those exposed to acute radiation poisoning. This image of tickling the dragon's tail burned into my memory and became to me a symbol of what we are doing today. ]