It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) - Live at LA Forum, Inglewood, CA - February 1974

Darkness at the break of noon
 Shadows even the silver spoon
 The handmade blade, the child's balloon
 Eclipses both the sun and moon
 To understand you know too soon there is no sense in tryin'
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 Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
 Suicide remarks are torn
 And the fools gold mouthpiece
 The hollow horn plays wasted words proved to warn
 That he not busy being born is busy dying
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 Temptation's page flies out the door
 You follow, find yourself at war
 Watch waterfalls of pity roar
 You feel to moan but unlike before
 You discover that you'd just be one more person crying
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 So don't fear if you hear
 A foreign sound in your ear
 It's alright, Ma, I'm only sighing
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 Some warn victory, some downfall
 Private reasons great or small
 Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
 To make all that should be killed to crawl
 While others say don't hate nothing at all except hatred
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 Disillusioned words like bullets bark
 As human Gods aim for their marks
 To make everything from toy guns that sparks
 To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
 Easy to see without looking too far that not much is really sacred
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 While preachers preach of evil fates
 Teachers teach that knowledge waits
 Can lead to 100 dollar plates
 Goodness hides behind its gates
 But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked
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 An' though the rules of the road have been lodged
 It's people's games that you got to dodge
 But it's alright, Ma, I can make it
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 Advertising signs that con
 You into thinking you're the one
 That can do what's never been done
 That can win what's never been won
 Meantime life outside goes on all around you
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 You loose yourself, you reappear
 You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
 Alone you stand without nobody near
 When a trembling distant voice, unclear
 Startles your sleeping ears to hear, someone thinks they really found you
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 A question in your nerves is lit
 Yet you know there is no answer fit
 To satisfy, insure you not to quit
 To keep it in your mind and not forget
 That it is not he or she or them or it that you belong to
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 Although the masters make the rules
 For the wise men and the fools
 I got nothing more to live up to
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 Old lady judges, watch people in pairs
 Limited in sex, they dare to push fake morals, insult and stare
 Money doesn't talk, it swears
 Obscenity, who really cares
 Propaganda, all is phony
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 While them that defend what they cannot see
 With a killer's pride, security
 It blows the minds most bitterly
 For them that think death's honesty won't fall upon them naturally
 Life sometimes must get lonely
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 My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
 False Gods, I scuff at pettiness which plays so rough
 Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
 Kick my legs to crash it off, say alright, I have had enough
 What else can you show me?
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 And if my thought-dreams could been seen
 They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
 But it's alright, Ma, it's life and life only