Light up another cigarette, crack open one more beer
Let’s drink to those who lived and ended up with a career
Who suffered the indignity of having their gold panned
Who didn’t end up dying quite as young as they had planned
Light up another cigarette, and pour out one more round
Let’s drink to those whose wasted years are not yet underground
Who suffered the injustice of not suffering enough
Who didn’t end up dying to send their record sales up
Can you still be a martyr to a cause that no one knows,
a prophet in your own home town, a sheep dressed in wolves’ clothes,
if they all know you struggled, but still managed to survive
playing double sets in some old, empty dives?
Light up another cigarette, line up another shot
Let’s drink to those poor devils that the critics have forgot
Who didn’t spend their short, sweet lives in angst-inducing pain
Who stayed on at the grindstone and instead lived on in vain.
Light up another cigarette, tap that last pony keg
Let’s drink to those who carried on, and had to learn to beg
Who suffered in the shadows, while some comets came and went
Who paid the tab when others left, their money still unspent.
Can you still be a martyr in obscurity, unknown,
if your splash isn’t big enough, if your death cult hasn’t grown,
if they see you still living, and assume you haven’t cried
as much as those brave legends who all died?
Light up another cigarette, and fill up one more glass
Let’s drink to those whose lives are more than a grand epitaph
Who pay the price for living by pretending not to die
Who write the songs we all sing when the caskets roll on by.
27 NOV 2005
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