“Old John Chapman Takes a Good Long Walk” Lyrics

As far as stories go, mine is the best one that I know. Though it’s the only one I really know – so, well, you know…
And yet as time thieves, tides, and bounds, slips left or right, side up or down, I fear I feel even my own ink quickly draining. Out with it then! Before my pen is sucked in old age white and thin, I’ll scrawl for sins and salvations, reflections fading. And though it’s so hard to detail it is quite simple to sum it: I went to bed brass and I woke up a trumpet.
And I’m playing God now, tumbling dice. I’m thinking once, not twice! I’m thinking big, not nice, necessarily. I’ve got a plan, but it’s my own. I’m sick of death and flesh and bone. I’m thinking all you people – all of you – are just scaring me.
So here I go, I foot the road; I smash the gravel under toe. I turn the moon around, and show the sun a thing or two. I’m dodging God, I’m made to move, a hungry hound dog’s twitching tooth. I’m rearranging battle maps they drew at Waterloo!
I am no Father’s fool, claim no vessel nor tool. At best, mutiny’s crew, itself a jab at Zeus. What was I telling you? What? Was I telling you? What was I? Telling you…
Ah, yes! So, waking as a yawp, my bonnet bee’d, shook soda popped, blinking around about the kingdom in whose reign I’d been dropped off, I coughed and sputtered to a start, turned twice the crank nailed to my heart. I felt I feared birds’ dream of clouds go sickly bleeding.
Shake dust off, wings! These prisoners’ rings, encrusted diamond death of things – fly, sing, promote notes towards the throats of landlords deeding! Cause: as its whipping accomplice wind stretched growing skin, strengthened and stiffened, I saw the sun is not chicken; it’s indifferent.
So I’m pitting God against these eyes. I’m thinking heaven’s not so high and mighty; thinking flight, not fight, but are you feeling me? All these desires fester untold, mad Master’s piece we’d pluck to mold, I’m thinking: this is me, and that is me, but what is really me? So sound the bells, and fig the trees! My breath is bigger than the breeze! I wrap the wind into a seed and sow it, deep in, too. I’m mocking God, a mimic king – I care no more for her or him. Tecumseh, time to wind that train back to Tippecanoe! Head beaten red and blue, come killing two by two. They put the fear in you.
There’s nothing left to prove.
They tried to take our birth. If lost, return to earth.
If lost, return to earth. If lost, return to the earth.