Lets Not Shit Ourselves (To Love And To Be Loved)

Well, the animals laugh from the dark of the wilderness A baby cries hard in an apartment complex As I pass in a car buried under the influence The city's driving me out of my mind I've 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 Now a mother takes loans out, sends her kids off to colleges Her family's reduced to names on a shopping list While a coroner kneels beneath a great, wooden crucifix He knows there's worse things than being alone And so I've learned to retreat at the first sign of danger I mean, why wait around, if it's just to surrender? And ambition, I've found, can lead only to failure I do not read the reviews No, I am not singing for you Well 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 buy something real, at least a telephone call home Well, my teachers, they built this retaining wall of memory All those multiple choices I answered so quickly And got my grades back and forgot just as easily But as least I got an A And so I don't have them to blame Well I should stop pointing fingers; Reserve my judgment of all those public action figures The cowboy presidents So loud behind the bullhorn, so proud they can't admit When they've made a mistake While poison ink spews from a speechwriter's pen He knows he don't have to say it So it, it don't bother him "Honesty", "Accuracy" is just "Popular Opinion." And the approval rating's high And so someone's gonna die Well 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're still the pawns in their game As they take eye for an eye until no one can see We must stumble blindly forward, repeating history Well, I guess we all fit into your slogan On the fast food marquee: Red blooded, White skinned oh and the Blues Oh and 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 And 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's nothing you could do that would ever change this I'm not angry. It happens. But you just can't do it again." So now I try to keep up, I've been exchanging my currency While a million objects pass through my periphery Now I'm rubbing my eyes cause they're starting to bother me I've been staring too long at the screen But where was it when I first heard the sweet sound of humility? It came to my ears in the goddamn loveliest melody How grateful I was then to be part of the mystery To love and to be loved. Let's just hope that is enough