Patti Smith Album

In the garden of consciousness
In fertile mind there lies the dormant seed
When blooming as charity
Conscience breathes a sigh of relief
The confessions of sleep
The awakening seed
Moved by love to serve
We celebrate all
Merit in life
Ah, the confessions of sleep
Unfolding peace
As we extend
According to need
And you will hear the call
All action great and small
Received joyfully
Heaven abounds
Let love resound
If he be mute
Give him a bell
If he be blind, an eye
It he be down, a hand
Lift up your voice
Lift up your voice
Lift up your voice
Give of your mind one mind
Give of your heart one heart
Give of your voice

I was alone and content in my world
Dancing on air
You sent to me a message that said
I like your style
Will you come to the temple tonight
And dance for me there
I pledge to you all that you wish
The moon and the stars

Lo and beholden
Why don't you give it up
Lo and beholden Come on you know it's true
Lo and beholden
Oh I'm beholden to you

In the palace there was wild reverie
And the look in your eyes
As I dropped veil after veil
Was drunken desire
The dove calls and God notes it all
The naked truth
Here is my veil the seventh and last
It will cost you

Lo and beholden
Why don't you give it up
Lo and beholden
Come on you know it's true
Lo and beholden
Oh I'm beholden to you

The royal word has passed
The prophet's head is all I ask
For beauty and the naked truth
It will cost you

Lo and beholden
Why don't you give it up
Lo and beholden
Come on you know it's true
Lo and beholden

Oh the story's told been told retold
From the sacred scriptures to the tabloids
All the fuss and fight none above a whisper
The soul of gold the belly of a boy

Well they drew him from the forest
Like they draw blood
Tied him to a tree like St. Sebastian
And he turned his head and let the arrows fly
Through the trees, the trees
The ornamental leaves

Boy cried wolf
Wolf don't come
Wolf within
Boy cried wolf

In the ancient mold they're dancing down
Calling to the moon but it don't answer
And they fell on their knees
and passed the bowl around
And the blood the blood the sacramental blood

Boy cried wolf
Wolf don't come
Wolf within
Boy cried wolf

I am the body I am the stream
I am the wake of everything
They bring me flowers that are myself
Garlands of blood that are myself
Slain the lamb that is himself

Torn reborn the cries of our dismay
Are nothing to the wind but whose to mind
Kings are lifted up and kings are thrown

Lost received retrieved
The human tide

Innocence had its day
Innocence had its day

What is the system that gets around
Recruits hearts with its timeless rhythm
The young glow but old men know
It's all a part of some crazy schism

Coming on like the dawn unrelenting light
Streets thick with its radiating
It's all aglow but we all know
True love is so complicated

Feeling funny don't know why
On a plane circling high
Equation persuasion
It's just persuasion

What is the body that has nobody
Go through life with nobody at all
It come and go where the wind blow
When persuasion come to call

Got me reeling don't know why
I'm on a plane circling high
Equation persuasion
Got the feeling I'm running in place
Caught in the orbit of the human race
Equation persuasion
It's just persuasion
It's jut persuasion
It's just persuasion

What is the body that has nobody
What is the rise without the fall
What is illusion without beauty
What is the system that's no system at all

Hey scout there's no equation
You can't prepare for the heart's invasion
You can't prepare for the heart's invasion

Hey there
Come and take a walk with me
Stroll into infinity
We'll stroll along
Until the dawn is gone
Midnight take it to the twilight
Just a little slice of light
Let's turn it off and on off and on

Strolling ain't it wonderful
Into a light that lingers
On and on, on and on

Strolling ain't it wonderful
Stars fall for we two
Bathed in a light of our own

Oh life
Much too great to sacrifice
Come and have another slice
Ah life goes on and on
Oh life
May you live a long life
May you live a long life

One fine day these words I pray
Will breathe a truth
Within yourself upon a shelf
A life anew
So many roads
It's hard to know what to do
All your dreams
All it seems
Is as you choose
For destiny my china bird
Is calling for you

The world turns
The flame burns
Bright and true
Near and far
Where you are
Guiding you china bird
The open skies
Are yearning for you

If they say it's not that way
Hold your view
With my love fly above
A light anew
Oh spread your wings
The open sky
Is calling to you china bird
My heart is yearning for you

If you fly away
I'll be waiting come what may
All my love a fragile ray

It's been a while since I've seen your face
It's been a while since I've walked this place
I see the monkeys riding on their bikes
Racing through the impossible night

You say you're feeling like a new tree
Man they'll cut you from limb to limb
Pick your pocket with such delight
Shake it to the right
Shake it in the light

Oh can't you see the glitter
The glitter in their eyes
Oh can't you see the glitter
The glitter in their eyes

Genius stalking in new shoes
Have you got WTO blues
Dust of diamonds
Making you sneeze
Kids on rollers ready for
Running through the junkyards
Breezing through the halls
Racing through the malls
Walking through the walls
They'll strip your mind
Just for fun
Quoth the raven
Yum yum yum

Children children everywhere
Selling souls for souvenirs
They've been sold out like as not
Just for chunks of Ankgor Vat

They'll trade you up
Trade you down
Your body a commodity
Our sacred stage
Has been defaced
Replaced to grace
The marketplace
Dow is jonesing at the bit
42nd Disney Street
Ragged hearts unraveling
Look out kids
The gleam the gleam
All that glitters
Is not all that glitters

I looked upon the book of life
Tracing the lines of face after face
Looking down at their naked feet
Bound in chains bound in chains
Chains of leather chains of gold
We knew it was wrong but we looked away
And paraded them down the colonial streets
And that's how they became enslaved

They came across on the great ships
Mothers separated from their babes
Husbands stood on the auction block
Bound in chains bound in chains
Chains of leather chains of gold
Men knew it was wrong but they looked away
And led them to toil in fields of white
As they turned their necks to a bitter landscape

Oh the people I hear them calling
Am I not a man and a brother
Am I not a woman and a sister

History sends us such strange messengers
They come down through time
To embrace to enrage
And in their arms even stranger fruit
And they swing from the trees
With their vision in flames
Ropes of leather ropes of gold
Men knew it was wrong but they looked away
Messengers swinging from twisted rope
As they turned their necks to a bitter landscape

Oh the people I hear them calling
Am I not a man and a brother
Am I not a woman and a sister

Ours is just another skin
That simply slips away
You can rise above it
It will shed easily

It all will come out fine
I've learned it line by line
One common wire
One silver thread
All that you desire
Rolls on ahead

Like a ship in a bottle
Held up to the sun
Sails ain't going nowhere
You can count every one
Until it crashes unto the earth
And simply slips away
You can hide in the open
Or just disappear

Ours is just a craving
And a twist of the wrist
Will undo the stopper
With abrupt tenderness
Die little sparrow
And awake
Singing

It all will come out fine
I've learned it line by line
One common wire
One silver thread
All that you desire

Hail brother
The distant thunder
Is nothing but hearts
Beating as one
Dance of a million
On God's pavilion
Come come
Beat on your drum

Awake people arise
Awake upright come
Fortune is falling like
Tears from the skies
Open your eyes

Hail sister
Come on over
To shape reshape
Things to come
Bow your head
Raise your lantern
Come come
Beat on your drum

Awake people arise
Awake upright come
Fortune is falling like
Tears from the skies
Open your eyes

United action is what we need
Time to say that everything is going to be
Wasted icons wasted lives
Like war obsolete

Awake people arise
Awake upright come
Fortune is falling like
Tears from the skies
Open your eyes

These are the times
The times of our own
These are the shapes
The world we formed
Swift is the arrow
Dark is the thorn
The slate is clean
The future awaits

You say hey
The state of the union
Is fine fine fine
I got the feeling that you're lying
Lying lying lying
I think we need
Think we're gonna need
A new party

They say to me
They say what's the word
I say it's thunderbird
I say it's thunderbird
Why don't you
Fly fly fly
Fly away hey
And while you're at it
Why don't you
Fertilize my lawn
Why don't you
Fertilize my lawn
With what's running from your mouth
Running from your mouth
Hey listen here

We got to get off
Our ass or get burned
The world's troubles
Are a global concern
Does your child have
Fresh water to drink
Wherever you are
Wherever you are you're invited
To think about this

When in the course
Of human events
It becomes necessary
To take things into your own hands
To take the water from the well
And declare it tainted by greed
We got to surely clean it up
Clean our house
Our inner house
Our outer house
Left right
And hey by the way
The human event
Is the party of the century
And you're all invited
It's where you are
Wherever you are
'Cause this party
Is for everyone
And the price of admission
Is love one another

If it wasn't for your golden hair
I would not be be lonely
If it wasn't for your golden hair
I would not be alone

If it wasn't for your piercing stare
I would not be be lonely
If it wasn't for your piercing stare
I would not be alone

I would not waltz in a widow's line
What was yours would not be mine
If it wasn't for your golden hair
I would not be alone

You courted me with princely airs
Said you'd love me only
Kiss the ribbons in my hair
Said darling come and fly

Flower of the Calvary
You swept me off my saddle
Lifted me into your life
A soldier's wife was I

You marched proudly for the horn
I prayed for your swift return
I waited for you so forlorn
'Ere to be alone
I longed for you, I longed to die
I was so lonely
The pillow's bare by my side
And yet I shall abide

For heaven has asset for me
Companion for eternity
So kiss the ribbons in my hair
Say darling come and fly

If it wasn't for your golden hair
I would not be lonely
If it wasn't for your golden hair

On a field of red one gold star
Raised above his head
Raised above his head
He was not like any other
He was just like any other
And the song they bled
Was a hymn to him

Awake my little one
The seed of revolution
Sewn in the sleeve
Of cloth humbly worn
Where others are adorned

Above the northern plain
The great birds fly
With great wings
Over the paddy fields
And the people kneel
And the men they toil
Yet not for their own
And the children are hungry
And the wheel groans

There before a grass hut
A young boy stood
His mother lay dead
His sisters cried for bread
And within his young heart
The seed of revolution sewn
In cloth humbly worn
While others are adorned

And he grew into a man
Not like any other
Just like any other
One small man
A beard the color of rice
A face the color of tea
Who shared the misery
Of other men in chains
With shackles on his feet
Escaped the guillotine

Who fought against
Colonialism imperialism
Who remained awake
While others slept
Who penned like Jefferson
Let independence ring
And the cart of justice turns
Slow and bitterly
And the people were crying
Plant that seed that seed
And they crawled on their bellies
Beneath the giant beast
And filled the carts with bodies
Where once had been their crops

And the great birds swarm
Spread their wings overhead
And his mother dead
And the typhoons and the rain
The jungles in flames
And the orange sun
None could be more beautiful
Than Vietnam
Nothing was more beautiful
Than Vietnam

And his heart stopped beating
And the wheel kept turning
And the words he bled
Were a hymn to them
I have served the whole people
I have served my whole country
And as I leave this world
May you suffer union
And my great affection
Limitless as sky
Filled with golden stars

The question is raised
Raised above his head
Was he of his word
Was he a good man
For his image fills the southern heart
With none but bitterness

And the people keep crying
And the men keep dying
And it's so beautiful
So beautiful
Give me one more turn
Give me one more turn
One more turn of the wheel

One more revolution