Brave and Strong

Yesterday, Mark, Judi, Mel and I went out to lunch after church. We were practicing our handwriting on the paper table cloth. I started writing out depressing Pedro the Lion lyrics, and it sent Mark and I off on a tangent for a good 10 minutes. This inspired today’s blog. What are some of your favorite lyrics? What gets stuck in your head and initiates thoughts and emotions?

 

Here are a few of mine:

 

Priests and Paramedics by Pedro the Lion

 

Paramedics brave and strong
Up before the break of dawn
Putting poker faces on
Broken bodies all day long
The neighbors heard a fight
Someone had a knife
It must have have been the wife
Husband’s lost a lot of blood
He wakes up screaming
“Oh my God, am I gonna die?
Am I gonna die?”
As they strapped his arms down to his sides
At times like these they’d been taught to lie
“Buddy just calm down, you’ll be alright”

Several friends came to his grave
His children were so well-behaved
As the priest got up to speak
The assembly craved relief
But he himself had given up
So instead he offered them this bitter cup
“You’re gonna die, we’re all gonna die
Could be twenty years, could be tonight
Lately I have been wondering why
We go to so much trouble to postpone the unavoidable
And prolong the pain of being alive”

 

 

The Resurrection Fern by Iron and Wine

 

In our days we will live
Like our ghosts will live
Pitching glass at the cornfield crows
And folding clothes

Like stubborn boys across the road
We’ll keep everything
Grandma’s gun, and the black bear claw
That took her dog

And when sister Laurie says “Amen,”
We won’t hear anything
The ten-car train will take that word
That fledgling bird

And the falling house across the way
It’ll keep everything
The baby’s breath, our bravery wasted
And our shame

And we’ll undress beside the ashes of the fire
Both our tender bellies wound in baling wire
All the more a pair of underwater pearls
Than the oak tree and its Resurrection Fern

In our days we will say
What our ghosts will say
We gave the world what it saw fit
And what’d we get?

Like stubborn boys with big green eyes
We’ll see everything
In the timid shade of the autumn leaves
And the buzzard’s wing

And we’ll undress beside the ashes of the fire
Our tender bellies all wound around in baling wire
All the more a pair of underwater pearls
Than the oak tree and its Resurrection Fern

 

 

 

There are many more, those are the first two that came to mind on this Monday afternoon. What about you?