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Should I get married?

from Corso's Marriage (2011) by Thomas Oboe Lee

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lyrics

Should I get married? Should I be Good? 

Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustus hood? 

Don't take her to movies but to cemeteries
tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets
then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries 

and she going just so far and I understanding why 

not getting angry saying You must feel! It's beautiful to feel!
Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone
and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky--


When she introduces me to her parents 

back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie,
should I sit knees together on their 3rd degree sofa
and not ask Where's the bathroom? 

How else to feel other than I am, 

often thinking Flash Gordon soap-- 

O how terrible it must be for a young man
seated before a family and the family thinking 

We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou! 

After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living?
Should I tell them? Would they like me then? 

Say All right get married, we're losing a daughter 

but we're gaining a son-- 

And should I then ask Where's the bathroom?



credits

from Corso's Marriage (2011), released June 12, 2012
Tim Krol, baritone
Holly Chatham, piano

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all rights reserved

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about

Thomas Oboe Lee Cambridge, Massachusetts

Thomas Oboe Lee was born in China in 1945. He lived in São Paulo, Brazil, for six years before coming to the United States in 1966. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, he studied composition at the New England Conservatory and Harvard University. He has been a member of the music faculty at Boston College since 1990. ... more

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