America 2022 (Daily Planet email #950)

To lead a better life,

I’m leaving on a jet plane.

Should I stay or should I go?

Freedom, oh freedom. Well, that’s just some people talking.

Why in the world would anybody put chains on me?

I’m not just one of your little toys.

Know it sounds funny but I just can’t stand the pain,

Tearing me apart like a new emotion.

Protest is futile, nothing seems to get through

Some try to tell me thoughts they cannot defend.

Time after time, you refuse to even listen

But you don’t even know your mind.

My motto’s always been when it’s right, it’s right.

Just what the truth is, I can’t say anymore –

Even you don’t quite believe you, like I knew you would.

I can’t be too late to say that I was so wrong.

When the truth is found to be lies,

Day after day I’m all confused.

Light in your head and dead on your feet

And the stillness of remembering what you had.

Don’t you know that you can count me out / in?

At work I just take time, and all through my coffee break time,

I got nobody left to believe.

Bad medicine is what I need…

It’s no surprise that they’re giving none away.

When lonely days turn to lonely nights

And I feel like it’s all been done,

I feel so bad, I got a worried mind.

(It oughta be illegal.)

Will you tell us when to live, will you tell us when to die?

Make it a crime to be lonely or sad?

With a word, she can get what she came for…

I can teach you, but I have to charge.

At first I was afraid; I was petrified!

Take a look at the lawman beating up the wrong guy…

I’m not the kind of girl who gives up just like that!

She couldn’t wait another day for:

Lawyers, guns, and money.

(And you remember? The jingles used to go:)

Nacho, nacho hat! A Focus and a Dell –

Guzzle down and taste the thrill of the day!

It’s so easy to own Tercel;

They’re made by little elves in a hollow tree. It’s slow good.

Liberty, liberty, liberty. Liberty.

And it makes me wonder:

Where do they all come from?

Some folks are born made to wave the flag,

Wiping his hands as he walks from the grave.

You gave me nothin’ now it’s all I got,

And yesterday was all we had.

Never tomorrow! The good Lord take you away.

Today I didn’t even have to use my A.K.

It took all the strength I had not to fall apart!

(Every now and then I fall apart.)

We believe in a land of love

And there ain’t nothin’ I can do about it.

Once there was a way to get back homeward –

The land grows weary of its own.

Funny how it seems I always wind up here with you,

My only friend, the end.