Free for Now

Ain't no pretty death sleeping in the street
Humming the gospel with newsprint on your feet
Hungry mouths to feed
Ever-present, that feast of riches
From tinted windows overlooking some crumbling promised land

Burn it down if it will burn, bury me if you must
Remember autumn sunsets, racing through the thickets
And like those thorns and brambles, it won't hurt forever
To keep me in your memory

Burn it down if it will burn, carry me in your heart
For as far as I have been, there is still so far to go
And it won't hurt forever to keep you in my memory

Laundry hanging from the sky above
Morning ships out on the bay
Out past Columbus, where the print still earns the page
And a bottle of cheap port wine could always buy the counsel
Of a few Merchant Marines

Burn it down if it will burn, carry me in your heart
For as far as I have been, there is still so far to go
And it won't hurt forever to keep me in your memory

Ain't no pretty death sleeping in the street
Humming the gospel with newsprint on your feet