Nightmare #71 by Larry Norman

The Anthology by Larry Norman

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Nightmare #71
by Larry Norman

Album: The Anthology

last night i had that same old dream it rocked me in my sleep

and left me the impression that the sandman plays for keeps

i dreamed i was in concert in the middle of the clouds

john wayne and billy graham were giving breath mints to the crowds

i fell through a hole in heaven i left the stage for good

and when i landed on the earth i was back in hollywood



the california earthquake it tore the land in half

while san andreas cleared her throat i heard tsunami laugh

the ground began to tremble the land began to sway

and people in the other states they were glad they'd moved away

but suddenly california just floated in the breeze

while every state that wasn't sank down into the seas



and soon i saw atlantis rumble and rise high

and the great egg of euphrates came down out of the sky

and out stepped shirley temple with guy kippee who was dead

and that communist bill robinson whom shirley called black red

they have a marionette of harpo marx they said it was an inside joke

but when i honked his horn he came alive and these were the words he spoke



with the continents adrift and the sun about to shift

will the ice caps drown us all or will we burn

we've polluted what we own will we reap what we have sown?

are we headed for the end or can we turn?

we've paved the forest killed the streams

burned the bridges to our dreams

the earth is bursting at the seams

and in pain of childbirth screams

as it gives life to what seems

to either be an age that gleams


or simply lays there dying

if this goes on will life survive how can it

out of the grave oh who will save our planet?
i said i'm pleased to meet you i always thought you were a scream

he said have you ever thought of having helen keller in your dreams

i said errol flynn dropped by but he tried to steal my girl

the she ran off with ronald colman said something about a new world


now i'm stuck with my own cooking hey i'm lonely can't you see

well he grabbed my leg and said exactly eighty nine words to me

count them

 let the proud but dying nation kiss the last generation

it's the year of the pill, age of the gland

we have landed on the moon but we'll clutter that up soon

our sense of freedom's gotten out of hand


we kill our children swap our wives

we've learned to greet a man with knives

we swallow pills in fours and five
s
our cities look like crumbling hives

man does not live he just survives

we sleep till he arrives


love is a corpse we sit and watch it harden

we left it oh so long ago the garden
the strings snapped briskly then went slack the marionette lay dead

while hoover played with the motorcade the body slumped and bled

the man who held the camera disappeared into the crowd

i said the hope of youth, fictitious truth, lays covered in a shroud

then up walked elmo lincoln and he said i beg you pardon

but we left it oh so long ago, the garden