There's a kid out on my corner hear him strumming like a fool   Shivering in his dungarees but still he's going to school   His cheeks are made of peach fuzz, his hopes may be the same   But he's signed up as a soldier out to play the music game      There are fake patches on his jacket   He's used bleach to fade his jeans   With a brand new stay pressed shirt   And some creased and wrinkled dreams   His face a blemish garden but his eyes are virgin clear   His voice is Chicken Little's, but he's hearing Paul Revere      When he catches himself giggling   He forces up a sneer   Though he'd rather have a milk shake   He keeps forcing down the beer   Just another folkie, late in coming down the pike   Riding his guitar, he left Kid brother with his bike      And he's got Guthrie running in his bones   He's the hobo kid who's left his home   And his Beatles records and the Rolling Stones   This boy is staying acoustic      There's Seeger singing in his heart   He hopes his songs will somehow start   To heal the cracks that split apart   America gone plastic      And now there's Dylan dripping from his mouth   He's hitching himself way down south   To learn a little black and blues   From old street men who paid their dues   'Cause they knew they had nothing to lose   They knew it, so they just got to it      With cracked old Gibsons and red clay shoes   Playing 1 4 5 chords like good news   And cursed with skin that calls for blood   They put their face and feet in mud   But oh, they learned the music from way down there   The real ones learn it somewhere      Strum your guitar, sing it kid   Just write about your feelings, not the things you never did   Inexperience, it once had cursed me   But your youth is no handicap, it's what makes you thirsty      Hey kid, you know you can hear your footsteps   As you're kicking up the dust   And the rustling in the shadows tells you secrets you can trust   The capturing of whispers is the way to write a song   It's when you get to microphones, the music can go wrong      You can't see the audience with spotlights in your eyes   Your feet can't feel the highway from where the Lear jet flies   When you glide in silent splendor in your padded limousines   Only you are crying there behind the silver screen      Now you battle dragons, but they'll all turn into frogs   When you grab the wheel of fortune, you get caught up in the cog      First your art turns into craft then the yahoos start to laugh   Then you'll hear the jackals howl 'cause they love to watch the fall   They're the lost ones out there feeding   On the wounded and the bleeding   They always are the first to see the cracks upon the walls      When I started this song I was still thirty-three   The age that Mozart died and sweet Jesus was set free   Keats and Shelley too soon finished, Charley Parker would be   And I fantasized some tragedy'd be soon curtailing me      Well just today I had my birthday, I made it thirty-four   Mere mortal, not immortal, not star-crossed anymore   I've got this problem with my aging, I no longer can ignore   A tame and toothless tabby can't produce a lion's roar      And I can't help being frightened on these midnight afternoons   When I ask the loaded questions   "Why does winter come so soon?"   And where are all the golden girls that I was singing for   The daybreak chorus of my dreams serenades no more      Yeah the minute man is going soft, the mirror's on the shelf   Only when the truth's up there can you fool yourself?   I am the aged jester who won't gracefully retire   A clumsy clown without a net caught staggering on the high wire      Yesterday's a collar that has settled round my waist   Today keeps slipping by me, it leaves no aftertaste   Tomorrow is a daydream, the future's never true   Am I just a fading fire or a breeze passing through?      Hello my Country, I once came to tell everyone your story   Your passion was my poetry   And your past, my most potent glory   Your promise was my prayer   Your hypocrisy my nightmare   And your problems fill my present   Are we both going somewhere?      Step right up young lady   Your two hundred birthdays make you old if not senile   And we see the symptoms there in your rigor mortise smile   With your old folks eating dog food and your children eating paint   While the pirates own the flag and sell us sermons on restraint      And while blood's the only language   That your deaf old ears can hear   And still you will not answer with that message coming clear   Does it mean there's no more ripples in your tired old glory stream   And the buzzards own the carcass of your dream?      Oh B U Y Centennial   Sell 'em pre-canned laughter   America Perennial   Sing happy ever after      There's a dance band on the Titanic   Singing nearer my God to thee   And the iceberg's on the starboard bow   Won't you dance with me      Yes I read it in the New York Times   That was on the stands today   It said that dreams were out of fashion   We'll hear no more empty promises   There'll be no more wasted passions   To clutter up our play      It really was a good sign   The words went on to say   It shows that we are growing up   In oh, so many healthy ways   And I told myself this is exactly where I'm at   But I don't much like thinking about that      Harry, are you really so naive?   You can honestly believe   That the country's getting better   When all you do is let her alone   Harry, can you really be surprised?   When it's there before your eyes   When you hold the knife that carves her   You live the life that starves her to the bone      Good dreams don't come cheap   You've got to pay for them   If you just dream when you're asleep   There is no way for them, to come alive, to survive      It's not enough to listen, it's not enough to see   When the hurricane is coming on, it's not enough to flee   It's not enough to be in love we hide behind that word   It's not enough to be alive, when your future's been deferred      What I've run through my body, what I've run through my mind   My breath's the only rhythm and the tempo is my time   My enemy is hopelessness, my ally honest doubt   The answer is a question that I never will find out      Is music propaganda, should I boogie, rock and roll   Or just an early warning system hitched up to my soul   Am I observer or participant or huckster of belief   Making too much of a life so mercifully brief?      So I stride down sunny streets and the band plays back my song   They're applauding at my shadow, long after I am gone   Should I hold this wistful notion that the journey is worthwhile   Or tiptoe cross the chasm with a song and a smile?      Well I got up this morning, I don't need to know no more   It evaporated nightmares that had boiled the night before   With every new day's dawning, my kid climbs in my bed   And tells the cynics of the board room your language is dead      And as I wander with my music through the jungles of despair   My kid will learn guitar and find his street corner somewhere   There he'll make the silence listen to the dream behind the voice   And show his minstrel Hamlet daddy that there only was one choice      Strum your guitar, sing it kid   Just write about your feelings not the things you never did   Inexperience, it once had cursed me   But your youth is no handicap, it's what makes you thirsty, hey kid      Strum your guitar, sing it kid   Just write about your feelings not the things you never did      Dance band on the Titanic   Singing nearer my God to thee   The iceberg's on the starboard bow   Won't you dance with me      The dance band on the Titanic   Singing nearer my God to thee   And the iceberg's on the starboard bow   Won't you dance with me      Yeah the dance band on the Titanic   Singing nearer my God to thee   And the iceberg's on the starboard bow   Won't you dance with me      Come on   Yeah the dance band on the Titanic   Singing nearer my God to thee   And the iceberg's on the starboard bow