Winged Victory

I'm oft alone, I'm rarely lonely,

The open road's my one and only.

The nightly cold comes on so fast,

True love truly doesn't last…

I squeezed to make it cry or sing,

Got the song, I lost the thing.

It's hard to think of frost when flowers bloom…

But at least the daffodils hang down,

Wear an almost human frown.

How that trouble chases me from room to loving room!

 

They said progress was a fact of earth.

That rhetoric’s as dumb as dirt.

I don't want to work a dead end job!

Penny saved, a penny lost…

So I'll owe no one, no one’ll owe me,

Shake my hand and set me free.

I cannot force a man to mind his word…

They said, won't you take it easy, son?

The war is over, rich folks won.

But I got lucky, I stayed raw, I held glory in my paw…

When I met a mule named Beauty,

In the state of old Missouri,

And a donkey named Winged Victory,

In the state of Arkansas!

I believe in the impossible,

That no one is expendable

And written large in every ache and pain…

Is us growing hard or soft as we can get,

Growing equal, growing opposite.

Our memory grows bigger every livelong ding-dong day…

So I won't swear a blessing, I'll swear a curse

It won't get better till it gets worse.

One hand might wash the other in the blood of martyrdom…

So what is to become of us?

Bones will break and guns will rust

And if you get satisfaction now,

You won't in kingdom come.

So it's old cold meds and coffee black,

Seeds and stems and potholes back

To places that won't let me call them home…

The old Bojangle, the old soft shoe

Leave tendons for the wrecking crew…

But I sang to the dementia ward

And the old folks all sang back.

I sang to the dementia ward

And the bastards all sang back!