I don't sing this anymore, it's interesting to type out these lyrics. I love the verse about the rocket. Mayor Jane Byrne's Summertime Chicago program hired streetsingers one summer, as it was then illegal to streetsing. A fellow came up to me on State Street, touched my arm, creeped me out, I went home and wrote this. My cousin Aram is a wetlands ecologist and she's made me question the use of snake as representing evil, as it does so often in Western literature.

I love your motion and your urgency
I love your music, said the snake to me
I said, you mustn't come to close to me
I fear you're stealing all my energy
I fear you're stealing all my energy

And the snake said, "Look at all these women here
See the buttocks and the breasts and hair
If you go down to the City Fair
You can get a young one for a dollar there

I said, "a woman's price is the price of me
And with a dollar, I buy slavery
Yes, I can buy one and I can buy two
But I can't buy one I don't have to lie to
I need someone I don't have to lie to"

But said the snake, "life will bring you down
Graviy pull your underground
Your heart will rot, and you skin will fall
And the worms will spawn inside your skull
The worms will spawn inside your skull

"Years ago, men sent a rocket
up to sneak around in God's hip pocket
all through space that rockets goes
but it cannot find what the seagull knows
and it will not find what the seagull knows"

With that the snake came for my throat
With poison venom, and twisting shout
I took his face and I drew my knife
I was not sorry for to take his life

For the life does not make the soul
As the future does not make the goal
The grains of sand do not make the beach
These are the lessons that the seagulls teach
These are the lessons that the seagulls teach