from the songs album Lifted (or) The Story Is In the Soil Keep Your Ear to the Ground
The animals laugh from the dark of the wilderness. A baby cried hard in an apartment complex,
as I pass a car buried under the influence. The city is driving me out of my mind.
I have seen a child is caught in the sad trap of gravity.
He falls from the lowest branch of the apple tree and lands in the grass and weeps for his dignity.
Next time he will not aim so high. Yeah, next time, neither will I.
A mother takes loans out, sends her kids off to colleges.
Her family is reduced to names on a shopping list.
Meanwhile, a coroner kneels beneath a great, wooden crucifix.
He knows that there are worse things than being alone.
I have learned to retreat at the first sign of danger.
I mean, why wait around, if it's just to surrender? Ambition, I have found, can only lead to failure.
I do not read the reviews. No, I am not singing for you.
I stood dropping a coin into the pit of a well. And I would throw my whole billfold
if I thought it would help. With all these wishes I make,
I should by something great, at least a telephone call home.
My teachers, they built the retaining wall memory, all those multiple choices I answered so quickly.
And I got my grades back and forgot just as easily, but as least I got an A.
So I don't have them to blame. I should stop pointing fingers;
reserve my judgment of all those public action figures, the cowboy president.
So loud behind the bullhorn so proud they can't admit when they have made a mistake.
While poison ink spews from a speechwriter's pen, he knows that he doesn't have to say it,
so it don't bother him. "Honesty" "Accuracy" are really just "Popular Opinion."
And the approval rating is high, so someone is going to die. ABC, NBC, CBS: Bullshit.
They give us fact or fiction? I guess an even split. And each new act of war is tonight's entertainment.
We are still the pawns in their game. As they take an eye for an eye until no one can see,
we must stumble blindly forward, repeating history. Well, I guess that we all fit into your slogan
on the fast food marquee: Red blooded, White skinned oh and the Blues.
I got the Blues! I got the Blues! That's me! That's me!
Well, I awoke in relief. My sheets and tubes were all tangled weak from whiskey and pills,
in a Chicago hospital. My father was there, in a chair, by the window, staring so far away.
I tried talking, just whispered, "...so sorry...so selfish..." He stopped me and said,
"Child I love you regardless and there is nothing you could do that would ever change this.
I'm not angry. It happens. You just can't do it again."
So now I try to keep up, I have been exchanging my currency.
While a million objects pass through my periphery. So now I am rubbing my eyes because
they are starting to bother me. I have been staring too long at the screen.
But where was it when I first heard the sound of brutality? It came to my ears in the goddamn
loveliest melody. How grateful I was them to be part of the mystery,
to love and be loved. Let's just hope that is enough.
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