Self Evident (live)

Yes,
 Us people are just poems
 We're 90% metaphor
 With a leanness of meaning
 Approaching hyper-distillation
 And once upon a time
 We were moonshine
 Rushing down the throat of a giraffe
 Yes, rushing down the long hallway
 Despite what the p.a. announcement says
 Yes, rushing down the long hall
 Down the long stairs
 In a building so tall
 That it will always be there
 Yes, it's part of a pair
 There on the bow of Noah's ark
 The most prestigious couple
 Just kickin back parked
 Against a perfectly blue sky
 On a morning beatific
 In its Indian summer breeze
 On the day that America
 Fell to its knees
 After strutting around for a century
 Without saying thank you
 Or please
 And the shock was subsonic
 And the smoke was deafening
 Between the setup and the punch line
 'Cause we were all on time for work that day
 We all boarded that plane for to fly
 And then while the fires were raging
 We all climbed up on the window sill
 And then we all held hands
 And jumped into the sky
 And every borough looked up when it heard the first blast
 And then every dumb action movie was summarily surpassed
 And the exodus uptown by foot and motorcar
 Looked more like war than anything I've seen so far
 So far
 So far
 So fierce and ingenious
 A poetic specter so far gone
 That every jackass newscaster was struck dumb and stumbling
 Over 'Oh my God' and Tthis is unbelievable' and on and on
 And I'll tell you what, while we're at it
 You can keep the Pentagon
 Keep the propaganda
 Keep each and every tv
 That's been trying to convince me
 To participate
 In some prep school punk's plan to perpetuate retribution
 Perpetuate retribution
 Even as the blue toxic smoke of our lesson in retribution
 Is still hanging in the air
 And there's ash on our shoes
 And there's ash in our hair
 And there's a fine silt on every mantle
 From Hell's Kitchen to Brooklyn
 And the streets are full of stories
 Sudden twists and near misses
 And soon every open bar is crammed to the rafters
 With tales of narrowly averted disasters
 And the whiskey is flowin
 Like never before
 As all over the country
 Folks just shake their heads
 And pour
 ♪
 So here's a toast to all the folks that live in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, El Salvador
 Here's a toast to the folks living on the Pine Ridge Reservation
 Under the stone cold gaze of Mt. Rushmore
 Here's a toast to all those nurses and doctors
 Who daily provide women with a choice
 Who stand down a threat the size of Oklahoma City
 Just to listen to a young woman's voice
 Here's a toast to all the folks on death row right now
 Awaiting the executioner's guillotine
 Who are shackled there with dread and can only escape into their heads
 To find peace in the form of a dream, peace in the form of a dream
 ♪
 'Cause take away our Playstations
 And we are a third world nation
 Under the thumb of some blue blood royal son
 Who stole the Oval Office and that phony election
 I mean
 It don't take a weatherman
 To look around and see the weather
 Jeb said he'd deliver Florida, folks
 And boy, did he ever
 And we hold these truths to be self evident:
 #1 George W. Bush is not President
 #2 America is not a true democracy
 #3 The media is not fooling me
 'Cause I am a poem heeding hyper-distillation
 I've got no room for a lie so verbose
 I'm looking out over my whole human family
 And I'm raising my glass in a toast
 Here's to our last drink of fossil fuels
 ♪
 May we vow to get off of this sauce
 Shoo away the swarms of commuter planes
 And find that train ticket we lost
 'Cause once upon a time, the line followed the river
 And peeked into all the backyards
 And the laundry was waving
 The graffiti was teasing us
 From brick walls and bridges
 We were rolling over ridges
 Through valleys
 Under stars
 I dream of touring like Duke Ellington
 In my own railroad car
 ♪
 I dream of waiting on the tall blonde wooden benches
 In a grand station aglow with grace
 And then standing out on the platform
 And feeling the air on my face
 Give back the night its distant whistle
 Give the darkness back its soul
 Give the big oil companies the finger, finally
 And relearn how to rock-n-roll
 Yes, the lessons are all around us, and the truth is waiting there
 So it's time to pick through the rubble, clean the streets and clear the air
 Get our government to pull its big dick out of the sand
 Of someone else's desert
 Put it back in its pants
 And quit the hypocritical chants of
 Freedom forever
 'Cause when one lone phone rang
 In two thousand and one
 At ten after nine
 On nine one one
 Which is the number we all called
 When that lone phone rang right off the wall
 Right off our desk and down the long hall
 Down the long stairs
 In a building so tall
 That the whole world turned
 Just to watch it fall
 ♪
 And while we're at it
 Remember the first time around?
 The bomb?
 The Ryder truck?
 The parking garage?
 The princess that didn't even feel the pea?
 Remember joking around in our apartment on Avenue D?
 Can you imagine how many paper coffee cups would have to change their design
 Following a fantastical reversal of the New York skyline?!
 It was a joke
 At the time
 And that was just a few years ago
 So let the record show
 That the FBI was all over that case
 That the plot was obvious and in everybody's face
 And scoping that scene
 Religiously
 The CIA
 Or is it KGB?
 Committing countless crimes against humanity
 With this kind of eventuality
 As its excuse
 For abuse after expensive abuse
 And it didn't have a clue
 Look, another window to see through
 Way up here
 On the 104th floor
 Look
 Another key
 Another door
 10% literal
 90% metaphor
 3000 some poems disguised as people
 On an almost too perfect day
 Must be more than pawns
 In some asshole's passion play
 So now it's your job
 And it's my job
 To make it that way
 To make sure they didn't die in vain
 Sshhhhhh...
 Baby, listen
 Hear the train?