Song of the High and Lonesome
Went up to Berkely on my birthday,
Some strange dream with a bear.
Sat in narrow tubes of metal,
Hurling our gifts into the air.
What with all the pomp and circumstance
Can a birthday bring to fold.
Strange illusion marked by slashes
Indicating we're headed old.
Not home you see, she doesn't like
To be called by that name.
Heart or hearth draws closer still
It is our language we have to blame.
What is it then, the sad strange word
We hold so hostile in ourselves?
Yet another laugh/trick
God marks in a book upon the shelves?
It's not the words that join together
Harmoniously to make the rhyme,
It's what lies there in between
That veins of gold and silver shine.
Went up to Berkely on my birthday,
Some strange dream with a bear.
Sat in narrow tubes of metal,
Hurling our gifts into the air.
What with all the pomp and circumstance
Can a birthday bring to fold.
Strange illusion marked by slashes
Indicating we're headed old.
Not home you see, she doesn't like
To be called by that name.
Heart or hearth draws closer still
It is our language we have to blame.
What is it then, the sad strange word
We hold so hostile in ourselves?
Yet another laugh/trick
God marks in a book upon the shelves?
It's not the words that join together
Harmoniously to make the rhyme,
It's what lies there in between
That veins of gold and silver shine.
“For my birthday all I want
Is a dog with chewing rope.”
Do not bite the hand that feeds you,
It is that hand that bites the most.
So spoiled was I, can I, should I
See in my old life of past,
That I should renounce all held things,
To live lonesome on my mountain pass.
For up there, there is a sound
So solemn still you've yet to see,
A fellow named Roscoe Holcomb,
A shepherd if it pleases thee.
No sheep to guide, no hens to feed,
He sits there in his mountain home.
That word again, so stuffed and idle,
He sits within it all alone.
“Hear me mountain!” The sound, it echoes
all throughout that shadowed pass.
“I am the king of the high and lonesome."
No man, no beast could cease so fast.
In the rippled rivers’ edge
A strange face smiling back at me,
All wrinkled and haggard (certainly not happy)
His smile is a eulogy.
For all the slices of reality
Bend the knee to conform to thee,
None of us are really happy,
Just illustrious chemistry.
Is a dog with chewing rope.”
Do not bite the hand that feeds you,
It is that hand that bites the most.
So spoiled was I, can I, should I
See in my old life of past,
That I should renounce all held things,
To live lonesome on my mountain pass.
For up there, there is a sound
So solemn still you've yet to see,
A fellow named Roscoe Holcomb,
A shepherd if it pleases thee.
No sheep to guide, no hens to feed,
He sits there in his mountain home.
That word again, so stuffed and idle,
He sits within it all alone.
“Hear me mountain!” The sound, it echoes
all throughout that shadowed pass.
“I am the king of the high and lonesome."
No man, no beast could cease so fast.
In the rippled rivers’ edge
A strange face smiling back at me,
All wrinkled and haggard (certainly not happy)
His smile is a eulogy.
For all the slices of reality
Bend the knee to conform to thee,
None of us are really happy,
Just illustrious chemistry.
