When You Give It Away Lyrics

Slid out of my dreams like a baby out of the nurse's hands Onto the hard floor of day I'd been wearing OJ's gloves and I couldn't get them off It was too early but I couldn't sleep Showered and dressed, stepped out into the heat The parrot things on the porch next door Announced my arrival on Chartres Street With their finest rendition of squealing brakes Down in Kaldi's café the newspaper headlines promised new revelations Concerning Prince Charles' Amex account A morose young man in old-tim Austrian drag Stares past his long mustache at the ground And last night's punks and fetish kids All tattoos and metal bits And in the other corner (wearing the white trunks) Today's tourists already sweating Deep in the city of the saints and fools Pearls before pigs and dung become jewels I sit down with tigers, I sit down with lambs None of them know who exactly I am I've got this thing in my heart I must give you today It only lives when you Give it away Languid mandalla of the ceiling fan Teases the air like a slow stroking hand Study the faces, study the cards Study the shadow creeping over the yard I've got this thing in my heart I must give you today It only lives when you Give it away Trouble with the nations, trouble with relations Where you going to go to find illumination? Too much to carry, too much to let go Time goes fast - learning goes slow But I've got this thing in my heart I must give you today It only lives when you Give it away