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User Name Thread Name Subject Posted
Will Bakker Lyr Req: Homeless Brother (Don McLean) (13) RE: Homeless Brother 25 Feb 99


I was walkin' by the graveyard last Friday night I heard somebody yellin', it sounded like a fight It was just a drunken hobo, dancin' circles in the night Pourin' whisky on the headstones in the blue moonlight So often have I wondered where their sorrows cannot show Where the police cannot find them, where the wanted man can go There's freedom when you're walkin' even though you're walkin' slow

Chorus: Smash your bottle on the gravestone and live while you can That homeless brother is my friend

It's hard to be a pack rat, it's hard to be a 'bo But livin's so much harder where the heartless people go Somewhere the dogs are barking and the children seem to know That Jezus on the highway was a lost hobo And they hear the holy silence of the temples in the hill And they see the ragged tatters as another kind of frill And they envy him the sunshine and they pity him the chill And they're sad to do their living for some other kind of thrill

(chorus)

Somewhere there was a woman, somewhere there was a child Somewhere there was a cottage where the marigolds grew wild But somewhere's just like nowhere, when you leave it for a while You'll find the broken hearted when you're travelin' jungle style Down the bowels of a broken land where numbers live like men Where those who keep their senses have them taken back again Where the night stick cracks with crazy rage Where mad men don't pretend Where wealth has no beginning And poverty no end

(chorus)

The ghosts of highway royalty have vanished in the night The Whitman wanderer walking toward a glowing inner light the children have grown older and the cops have gripped us tight There's no spot 'round the melting pot for free men in their flight And you who live on promises and prosper as you please The victim of your riches often dies of your disease He can't hear the factory whistle, just the lonesome freight train's wheeze he's livin' on good fortune, he ain't dyin' on his knees Smash your bottle on the gravestone and live while you can That homeless brother is my friend That homeless brother is my friend

It's along song, typing with two fingers. I took it from the sleeve of the album 'Homeless Brother' from 1974. By the way, what's a Whitman wanderer?


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