Patti Smith - Memento Mori lyrics

The fans were whirlin' Like the blades of a 'copter Liftin' into the skies above some foreign land Soaked with the bodies of so many friends. Johnny waved He was on his way home He waved goodbye to his comrades in arms, And all the twisted things he'd seen. He waved goodbye And the blades hit Something Maybe just Fate, but the blades hit The 'copter went up in flames And Johnny never went marchin' home Johnny never went marchin' home They took his name And they carved it on a slab of marble With several thousand other names All the fallen idols The apples of their mother's eye Just another name Meanwhile Back on that burning shore Johnny's comrades stood speechless They looked with uh-uh-uh-uh disbelieving eyes As those bits of metal and the embers The embers of his eyes Fanned out into the air Black dust Flames Oh Johnny! some day they'll make a movie about you And in the making of that movie Some mad apocalypse It will become even stranger than the simple act Just a boy going up up up Just a boy going up In flames in the smoke Just another life Just another breath And who'll remember Oh eternity now As eternal as a sheet of marble Eternal as a slab on a green hill And your name And all your fallen brothers And all the ones not cut All the ones remembered only in the hearts A mother a father a brother a sister a lover a son a daughter Shall not shall not fade shall not fade Your ancestors salute you And the gods of your ancestors salute you Having having been formed by the minds of your ancestors The gods of your ancestors salute you Having been formed by your ancestors The gods of your ancestors salute you They draw you in they draw you through They draw they draw you through that golden door Mornin' boy [come on in boy] We remember you We conceived of you We conceived of your breath We conceived of the whole human race And we conceived it to be a beautiful thing Like a tulip bending in the wind Sometimes it comes back to us In the form of a handful of dust Comes back in the form of a smitten child Our raped daughters, ah the broken bones Souls cleaved from hearts They come back to us And our hands are filled with their rotting tissues But we turn not our backs We press our lips Into their cancer into the dust into the remains of each one And that love is there and will greet you, will greet you Mornin' boy [come on in boy] It's eternal love Well here, go ahead, run through that flame Awww man, running through your mind You took a cat, you took a life, you took it by the tail And you swirled it around your head And you thrashed it, you smashed the life out of it And you knew that it would be your own But you wanted to feel, you wanted to feel it die Because you know you would feel your own You would feel your own But you're remembered! You're remembered! You're remembered DEAD! You're remembered DEAD! You're remembered DEAD! We remember We remember We remember Everything Everything