I saw the lights of the Commodore Barry From the deck of the ghost of the Flower Street ferry And I felt the shock of an atom bomb When the tired old city of Chester was draped and dying in my arms For a while I was lost under the weight of remembering Of how the sun would warn the projects some mornings When the birds were falling like winter's frozen rain And I was all fingers numb, holding a brown paper lunch, twelve years old and already ashamed
Now soon I was floating over Highland Avenue By my side was the Red Cross, the pope and the president too Yeah I had returned like I swore I would To right some wrongs, and sing my song, and share the luck that every man should But when the fever broke and I awoke from the dream I was pa**ed out beside a jukebox siphoning gasoline When my brother yanked me hard from the corner bar And carried my drunk bones, all the way home, draped and heavy in his arms