Wear My Ring Around Your Neck
Crowd below runs wild in the streets
Two rented brothers race down two separate alleys
Heading for the finish line
Down in the train yard out by the stockyard
Butchers with aprons hack meat in the snow
Blood has the brothers pulsing with envy
Heading for the finish line
Two rented brothers. Their faces keep changing
Just like these feelings I have for you
And nothing's forever not even five minutes
When you're headed for the finish line
Down in the depot out by the meat rack
Down by the tunnels surrounding the jail
Pr
Hey Jack Kerouac
[ Robert Buck/Natalie Merchant ]
Hey Jack Kerouac, I think of your mother
and the tears she cried, she cried for none other
than her little boy lost in our little world that hated
and that dared to drag him down. Her little boy courageous
who chose his words from mouths of babes got lost in the wood.
Hip flask slinging madman, steaming cafe flirts,
they all spoke through you.
Hey Jack, now for the tricky part,
when you were the brightest star who were the shadows?
Of the San Francisco beat boys you were the favorite.
Now they sit and rattle their bones and think of their blood stoned days.
You chose your words from mouths of babes got lost in the wood.
The hip flask slinging madman, steaming cafe flirts,
nights in Chinatown howling at night.
Allen baby, why so jaded?
Have the boys all grown up and their beauty faded?
Billy, what a saint they've made you,
just like Mary down in Mexico on All Souls' Day.
You chose your words from mouths of babes got lost in the wood.
Cool junk booting madmen, street minded girls
in Harlem howling at night.
What a tear stained shock of the world,
you've gone away without saying goodbye.