'Tis of thee

They caught the last poor man
On a poor man's vacation
They cuffed him and confiscated his stuff
They dragged his black ass down to the station
And said, ok, the streets are safe now
All your pretty white children can come out and see spot run
And they came out of their houses
And they looked around
But they didn't see no one

My country 'tis of thee

Virtue is relative at best
There's nothing worse than a sunset
When you're driving due west
And I'm afraid that my love
Is gonna come up short
There is no there there
I guess I'm scared
Cuz I want to have good news to report
Every time I come up for air

Now I'm cruising through a chromakey blue sky
And I know that in an hour or three
The sun is gonna be in my eyes

Come
Come away
Come away from
Come away from it

Next to the glass ashtray
In a little plastic baggy
Is a bitter rock remedy
Really good stuff
But I take offense to the fact
That you're so hell bent
Are you trying to tell me this world
Just isn't beautiful enough?

Do you want to get off?
Is this your stop?
Do you gotta have a tripledecker super fudge sundae

In the jukebox of her memory
The list of names flips by and stops
She closes her eyes
And smiles as the record drops

Then she drinks herself up and out
Of her kitchen chair
And she dances out of time
As slow as she can sway
For as long as she can say
This dance is mine
This dance is mine

Her hair bears silent witness
To the passing of time
Tattoos like mile markers

If the mattress was a table top
And the bed sheet was a page
We'd be written out
Like a couple of question marks
My convex to your concave
And we'd be lying here
At the end of a sentence
And asks, are you ready now?
Are you gonna glow in the dark?
Are you gonna show me how?

Do you like to watch when water misbehaves?
Do you like waves?
As the wind shifts

Growing up it was just me and my mom
Against the world
And all my sympathies were with her
When I was a little girl
But now I've seen both my parents
Play out the hands they were dealt
And as each year goes by
I know more about how my father must have felt

I just want you to understand
That I know what all the fighting was for
And I just want you to understand

From the depth of the pacific
To the height of Everest
And still the world is smoother
Than a shiny ball-bearing
So I take a few steps back
And put on a wider lens
And it changes your skin,
Your sex, and what your wearing
Distance shows your silloutte
To be a lot like mine
Like a sphere is a sphere
And all of us here have been here all the time

You brought me to church,

Up up up up up up points the
Spire of the steeple
But god's work isn't done by god
It's done by people

Up up up up up up points the
Fingers of the trees
The lumberjacks with their bloody axes
Are on their knees

And just when you think that you've got enough
Enough grows
And everywhere that you go in life
Enough knows

Up up up up up up dances

It's not so much that we got closer
It's that her face just go bigger
And by the time it was filling up my whole view
I figured my face had got bigger too
So I used it to try and way her
Say something to her
Make my case
But my face
Never had a chance
All along it was the wrong song and dance

I just stood there
Without even a stance
Helpless to her advance
And her retreat

You cease to smell the steel plant
After you've lived there for a while
Smoke is snow is ash are leaves that blow
Through the air aloft
All our houses dim their sliding
To the same soot gray style
And we hang our laundry out on Sundays
When they turn the furnaces off

Everybody's daddy works up on the line
The Stienbrenners and the Wilczewskis
Have been there the longest time

In walked a man in the shape of a man
Holding a hat-shaped hat
He held up two fingers and said 'how many fingers?"
And I said 'Peace man, that's where it's at"
I said you are what you do in order to
Prevent becoming what you're busy not doing
And if you do do it truly
Then you arrive at it newly
Then in the end you are absolved
And the problem of heaven is solved

come, come away
come away from
come away from it

come, come away
come away from
come away from it

won't you come
come away from
come away from it

why won't you
why won't you come
come away from
come away from it

come
come away from
come away
come away from
won't you come
come away
come away from

next to the glass ashtray
in a little plastic baggy
is a bitter rock remedy
really good stuff