When You Give It Away

Slid out of my dreams like a baby out of the nurse's hands
 Onto the hard floor of day
 I'd been wearing OJ's gloves and I couldn't get them off
 It was too early but I couldn't sleep
 Showered and dressed, stepped out into the heat
 The parrot things on the porch next door
 Announced my arrival on Chartres Street
 With their finest rendition of squealing brakes
 Down in Kaldi's café the newspaper headlines promised new revelations
 Concerning Prince Charles' Amex account
 A morose young man in old-tim Austrian drag
 Stares past his long mustache at the ground
 And last night's punks and fetish kids
 All tattoos and metal bits
 And in the other corner (wearing the white trunks)
 Today's tourists already sweating
 Deep in the city of the saints and fools
 Pearls before pigs and dung become jewels
 I sit down with tigers, I sit down with lambs
 None of them know who exactly I am
 I've got this thing in my heart
 I must give you today
 It only lives when you
 Give it away
 Languid mandalla of the ceiling fan
 Teases the air like a slow stroking hand
 Study the faces, study the cards
 Study the shadow creeping over the yard
 I've got this thing in my heart
 I must give you today
 It only lives when you
 Give it away
 Trouble with the nations, trouble with relations
 Where you going to go to find illumination?
 Too much to carry, too much to let go
 Time goes fast - learning goes slow
 But I've got this thing in my heart
 I must give you today
 It only lives when you
 Give it away