Otis and Marlena Songtext
von Joni Mitchell

Marlena under Foster Grants
She′s undercover from the dawn's advance
That girl is travel-drained
And the neon-mercury vapor-stained Miami sky, it′s red as meat
It's a cheap pink Rosé

Otis in the driver's seat
Watches the streetlights fade away
On louvered blocks in green sea air
In fluorescent fossil yards
Slippers are shuffling into folding chairs
Freckled hands are shuffling cards

They′ve come for fun and sun
While Muslims stick up Washington

Otis empties out the trunk
On the steps of that celebrated dump
Sleazing by the sea
Bow down to her royal travesty
In her ballrooms, heads of state
In her bedrooms, rented girls


Always the grand parades of cellulite
Jiggling to her golden pools
Through flock and Cupid colonnades
They jiggle into surgery
So, hopefully beneath the blade, they
Dream of golden beauty

They′ve come for fun and sun
While Muslims stick up Washington

Marlena, white as stretcher sheets
Watches it all from her tenth-floor balcony
Like it's her opera box
All those Pagliacci summer frocks
Otis is fiddling with the TV dial
All he gets are cartoons and reruns

She taps her glass with an emery file
Watching three rings in the sun
The golden dive, the fatted flake
And sizzle in their mink oil
It′s all a dream she has awake
Checked into Miami Royal

Where they've come for fun and sun
While Muslims stick up Washington