"Born on Bloody Island"
Just a live in-house recording, so no great shakes there. This one is all about the poetry anyway, but I'll make a proper recording of it someday.
Born on Bloody Island I was born on Bloody Island in the Mississippi mud
Catfish nipping at my toes
Mama was a’pushing while the water was whooshing
Where daddy was, ain’t nobody knows
I got middle-age spread in the third grade
I was ahead of my time
You say overeater, I say overachiever
It’s all just a state of mind
Chorus:
This was my life
What was it worth—
To waste each passing hour
Upon this Earth?
Mama caught me tossing cats up in the power lines
I said, “I didn’t know it was against the rules;
Why such a bugaboo ‘bout making ghetto barbecue”
But mama never suffered no fools
I ain’t beat my little sister in almost a week
She’ll think I don’t love her no more
So, when the preacher’s done preachin’ and we get home from meetin’
I’m gonna give that old girl what for
Chorus
In 1918 daddy landed in France
To show General Pershing how to win at war
But he pulled some kind of stunt, got sent to the Western front
And we never saw daddy no more
Mosey on down to the train tracks
Lay a penny on a rail
While the whole world was sinking, I was flattening Lincoln
It was a plan that just could not fail
Chorus
Running bootleg whiskey in my 24th year
Seemed like such a good scheme
But a cop pulled a gun, and I knew I was done
When I was floating above the scene
Here was daddy holding the coin I had flattened as a boy
While pointing to a sign below and smilin’
“It said Lincoln came here to fight a duel back in eighteen hundred forty two”
This place they used to call Bloody Island
post edited by Wayfarer - 2018/11/14 01:38:35