Downtown

Buses used to run like thunder
Up and down our street
We’d grab the bumper and slide behind them
Till we scorched our feet
I struck a match on my front tooth
And put it out in my hand
Headed for some kind of future out there
As a tough and tender man

We used to go downtown
But we don’t go anymore
We used to go downtown
To the jazz and the lights and the girls stayed out all night
Before The war

Your mom used to do my mom’s hair
And laugh like ladies do
Your dad used to call my dad outside in the evening
By his first name, too
They’d sit there quietly smoking in the sunset
And watch us shoot some hoop
Then the greed and the money and the misery killed them…

We used to go downtown
But we don’t go anymore
We used to go downtown
To the noise and the crowd and turn that jazz up loud
Before the War

(Didn’t we have our day
Didn’t we sing our song
Didn’t it take us by surprise when things went wrong)

Now I play Chinese Solitaire
Till there’s one left on the board
No way now to get down there from here
Down to where the truth is stored
They say it’s buried in the Underground
Down too deep to see
What the world was like back then
When we had dreams of being free

We used to go downtown
But we don’t go any more
We used to go down town
But the way things are ain’t like they used to be
Before The War

We used to go downtown…
But we don’t go anymore