Nightmare #71 Songtext

von Larry Norman

Last night I had the same old dream it rocked me in my sleep
And left me the impression that the sandman plays for keeps
I dreamed I was in concert on the middle of a cloud
John wayne and billy graham were giving breath mints to the crowd
I fell through a hole in heaven I left the stage for good
And when I landed on the earth I was back in hollywood

The california earthquake it tore the land in half
While san andreas cleared her throat I heard tsunami laugh
The ground began to tremble the land began to sway
And people in the other states they were glad they'd moved away
But suddenly california just floated in the breeze
While every state that wasn't there sank down into the seas

And soon I saw atlantis rumble and rise high
And the great egg of euphrates came down out of the sky
And out stepped Shirley Temple with Guy Kibbee who was dead
And that communist Bill Robinson whom Shirley called black red
They had a marionette of Harpo Marx they said it was an inside joke
But when they honked his horn he came alive and these were the words he spoke

"with the continents adrift and the sun about to shift
Will the icecaps drown us all or will we burn
We've polluted what we own will we reap what we have sawn?
Are we headed for the end or can we turn?
We've paved the forest killed the streams
Burned the bridges to our dreams
The earth is bursting at the seams
And in the pain of childbirth screams
As it gives life to what seems
To either be an age that gleams
Or simply lays there dying
Out of the grave oh who will save our planet?"

I said i'm pleased to meet you I always thought you were a scream
He said "have you ever thought of having Helen Keller in your dreams?"
I said Errol Flynn dropped by but he tried to steal my girl
Then she ran off with Ronald Colman said something about a new world
Now i'm stuck with my own cooking, hey i'm lonely can't you see
Well he grabbed my leg and said exactly eighty nine words to me
Count 'em

"let the proud but dying nation kiss the last generation
It's the year of the pill, age of the gland
We have landed on the moon but we'll clutter that up soon
Our sense of freedom's gotten out of hand
We kill our children swap our wives
We've learned to greet a man with knives
We swollow pills in fours and fives
Our cities look like crumbling hives
Man doesn't live he just survives
We sleep till he arrives
Love is a corpse we sit and watch it harden
We left it oh so long ago, the garden"

The strings snapped briskly then went slack the marionette lay dead
While Hoover played with the motorcade the body slumped and bled
The man who held the camera disappeared into the crowd
I said the hope of youth, fictitious truth, lays covered in a shroud
Then walked Elmo Lincoln and he said I beg your pardon
But we left it oh so long ago, the garden