Shorebird
My first home was paradise
Halfway between the sea and Eden
I never needed your advice
Just the words that I was reading
That’s the lift that leisure gives
With a thousand bullets in the breech
You can live and can let live
You can sleep on an ash-white beach
My first friend was a shorebird
I’m gonna pay it forward
I’m gonna pay it forward sometime
So I drew a bead on imagined gulls
Drew the blood meridian
Drew in charcoal crossbone skulls
Drew the life quotidian.
Pay it all forward farther
I’m gonna be a father
I’m gonna be a father sometime
Pay it all forward smarter
I’m gonna be a martyr
I’m gonna be a martyr sometime
Of all the children I beget
I expect them to be great
Now we’ve got the internet
So we don’t need the interstate
And although I am my father’s son
I never fired his six-shooter
I learned the workings of a gun
From a diagram on the computer
Where is the Wild West now boy
You should have been a cowboy
You should have been a cowboy sometime
But the coast was sold to a wealthy buyer
The demolition staked with Dayglo
The sun is hot as pistol fire
And it can’t tell a target from a halo
I could wear a Kevlar vest
But it wouldn’t make me a better fighter
Or I could build a barbed wire nest
And sit in there and be a writer
We’re headed for disaster
Somebody call the pastor
Somebody call the pastor sometime
Pay it all forward faster
We’re headed for disaster
We’re headed for disaster sometime
So I came along and staked my share
But I’m nothing more than a short-term squatter
It’s getting crowded everywhere
We’re running short on food and water
My faucet starts to sputter
I’m gonna die in a gutter
I’m gonna die in a gutter sometime
It’s not that I’m a pessimist
Or that I’ve lost faith in god
But all the elders kids have kissed
Are an inadvertent firing squad
They burnt down the old cliché
The hallmark image of the phoenix
But its counterpart in the present day
Is the letterpress of the double helix
You’re gonna bring your matches
We’re gonna turn to ashes
We’re gonna turn into ashes sometime
Lift up the safety latches
We’re gonna turn into ashes
We’re gonna turn into ashes sometime
They said it’s not the smartest
I’m gonna be an artist
I’m gonna be an artist sometime
My first friend was a shorebird
I’m gonna pay it forward
I’m gonna pay it forward sometime