Pink Slips

Three brides before breakfast

These rails just wrecked us

My right hand on my heart

While my left hand snaps your necklace

Each day gets a little more scary

We're holding on, in a way, but just barely

Moms and Dads are rationing their cash for the commissary

But I can't stop without going all the way

It's a habit someone gave me

The nursemaid of the blank page

A canary of the American eclipse

A profiteer picking up pink slips

This wish just to go back, hey

When I know wasn't ever, ever happy

Show me my best memory, it's probably super crappy

Nine years down in Texas

With sluts of both sexes

Liars, lumps, and drug addicts, and drunks; I love my friends

But I can't stop without going all the way

And I've been that way since '83

The midwife of the jetlife

Or a genie with a golden spliff

A prostitute paid in pink slips

I crashed my Cadillac in the valley of mirrors

When the call came, there was nobody here

When they came for the communists, I kissed them on the lips

Then they came for the singers, in a haze of pink slips

I guess I was just dreaming and drifting

Or I was artificially lifted

Only happy until the age of 10 is still a gift

But we can't go back to those 227 days

It's just a dream we all were having

Hey, mariner in the dirt trade

Oh, postman of the post-apocalypse

- from Academy Awards to pink slips!

And I showered my Corvette with Moët for years

Now I'm standing in the rain drinking the champagne of beers

They say, "Who's that shadow sneaking off behind the pier?

He was rushed and then he was rattled, but now he's finally in the clear

To be a refugee from the rat race

In his white tuxedo and his sad-face

A music group that your dad plays, singing songs about autumn days

He's the laureate of the Granite State

Now he doesn't even write, he just riffs

And they'll cover up his coffin with pink slips."