I′m oft alone, I'm rarely lonely
The open road′s my one and only
The nightly cold comes on so fast
True love truly doesn't last
I squeezed to make it cry or sing
Got the song, I lost the thing
It's hard to think of frost when flowers bloom
But at least the daffodils hang down
Wear an almost human frown
How that trouble chases me from room to loving room!

They said progress was a fact of earth
That rhetoric′s as dumb as dirt
I don′t want to work a dead end job!
Penny saved, a penny lost
So I'll owe no one, no one′ll owe me
Shake my hand and set me free
I cannot force a man to mind his word
They said, won't you take it easy, son?
The war is over, rich folks won
But I got lucky, I stayed raw, I held glory in my paw

When I met a mule named Beauty
In the state of old Missouri
And a donkey named Winged Victory
In the state of Arkansas!
I believe in the impossible
That no one is expendable
And written large in every ache and pain
Is us growing hard or soft as we can get
Growing equal, growing opposite
Our memory grows bigger every livelong ding-dong day

So I won′t swear a blessing, I'll swear a curse
It won′t get better till it gets worse
One hand might wash the other in the blood of martyrdom
So what is to become of us?
Bones will break and guns will rust
And if you get satisfaction now
You won't in kingdom come
So it's old cold meds and coffee black
Seeds and stems and potholes back
To places that won′t let me call them home

The old Bojangle, the old soft shoe
Leave tendons for the wrecking crew
But I sang to the dementia ward
And the old folks all sang back
I sang to the dementia ward
And the bastards all sang back!