Michael McGuire Song In First Person
SONG IN FIRST PERSON
© Electric Babylon Music Author: M.M.
I sit waiting for the train to pass looking at the commemorative plaque,
something about the first steam engine in Tennessee in eighteen fifty,
I wonder someday if all our achievements will be seen as mere
mistakes, as we create a thousand victims and one planet for every
single beneficiary, but some days I’m so full of love I can see the
beauty in every ugly little detail, most days so full of rage I can barely
see at all, I just feel a little forsaken I guess much like most everyone
else, which leads to forsaken by whom and I always dismiss every
answer that comes to mind, yet I know the answer is this land; this
America; this work.
I drive down Jefferson street there is a house that is no more than
broken down shack, a women in the front lawn trimming the hedges
as if were the work of the lord, I smile and it sends a shiver down my
spine and I’m not really sure why, it’s just like Springsteen said people
always find some reason to believe, they continue to believe even when
their back is broken by the wheel of their labor, I have seen people
struggle; win; lose and even watched them die, I have stood at there
sides; shaken there hands and nearly broke down when they confessed
their fear, strangers yet brothers; I’ve always been so unplugged but
oh how I have felt connected, it’s a vapor like realization of equality
that brings out this true compassion, but it can be so hard in the face
of all the petty little indecencies, people pull off these little games of
advantage that wont do half the good and twice the damage, and I
don’t really know my place in all this except maybe to sing this song,
but as I sit trying to frame all this in words I think how the calculation
of art can seem so cold, but I truly feel somehow warmed by it all
though many days I struggle to remember this, and I’m no patriot this
is simply my home; America land of opportunity and doom, I may
never be a believer but I will get up every morning and lay my fingers
on the pulse of this land.
Nov00
