Well I know a street fighting man who walks with a cane.

He’s got a pain in his heart

And a pain in his brain.

He said, “there’s nothing to do when you’re flat on your back.”

I said, “there’s fewer things more distressing than that.’

Then he told me a story of a dream that he’d had,

with a twinkle in his eye and the look of the damned.

He said “it all started when I was hit in the head;

I was knocking on the door

But I wasn’t quite dead.

When I awoke I was dying in a mystical place

With a bullet in my chest and a smile on my face.

I was lying on my side

With my head in my hands

And the sun in my eyes bounced off fairy-dust sand.

I saw a man on the beach who crawled out of the sea

with a Prometheus scowl and a knife in his teeth.

He bounded towards me and started to speak

And the sand swelled beneath me

And put me back on my feet.

He said, ‘I know you’re all wobbly but there’s no time to waste

So put a wiggle in your walk and wipe that smile from your face.’

We trudged off the beach;

I said goodbye to the sand

And we came to a road on a barren, dark land.

We passed them in droves, weary walkers like us,

Those who fell off the wagon and didn’t catch the bus.

Looking on one man,

I saw the face of my dad.

He was battered and old, tired and sad

And he looked upon me with a gaze of stone.

He said, ‘go on and fuck off son.

Quit that gaping and gawking,

This is hell and you’ve got to keep walking.’

Prometheus pushed me and said ‘we’ve no time for talking.

Your daddy was right, bud, we’ve got to keep walking.

This road is long

And now its your home.

You’ll keep up with me or you’ll walk it alone.’

When I awoke I was crying

In a flophouse bed

With a numb left arm

And bees in my head.

They said the dream that I had

Had shocked me right back

To the the land of the living

Now I walk with a limp

And that’s the price that I pay

For being forgiven and living again.”