Medicine Blues

Hey helpless brothers, I'm talking to thee

Forget Indian summer and your dreams of the sea

I was confiding in the toilet, you see I'm a prisoner of war

My echo said, stop me if you've heard this one before

If you want to get laid go strut for the bomb

Because everybody wants her and no one is wrong

What color is the ocean after the oil

It's the color of the sky cooked in aluminum foil

But the Shakespeare cape with the tattered seams

Suits a prince just fine when he's suicidal and mean

So go find me a father who needs to be killed

And a mother who cheats and some blood can be spilled

Briefing the murderer under a bulb

The lawyer asked the maggot don't you want to get old?

Because you can go down dignified and pay for your sins

Or you can learn to lean on me and everybody wins

So tell me whose your uncle and how do you plead?

Don't look down at your shoes kid, it's time to look up to me

If you can't see my mirror I cannot see you

That's what the officer explained to the Jew

But maybe the lines which define us are just ditches in our heads

Besides I never had the privilege of any brown sugar in my bed

But I've been to the doctor and he swears he can fix my nose

So I traded in my bible for a catalog of clothes

The Noble Lady, Noble Savage, Noble Negro, Noble Poor

They don't cruise the boulevard on their halos anymore

They were forced underground when the towers collapsed

For carrying an imaginary cross on their backs

But don't worry they've been beaten, sterilized and cannot breed

They sing Home on the Range around a barrel in Queens

Well here's to the era fill in the blank

And to all of the terror-filled lives of the saints

And to Aesop, Confucius, Aristotle and Calvin

And to the marble pillars that humored cuckolded Samson

As for me I was betrayed the moment I asked myself, why?

When I put down my basket of berries and stared up at the sky

Where's my medicine, my sweet medicine?

All of this time I thought I was fine

Until I woke up trying to crawl out of my skin

Tell me, where's my medicine?