We’re All Gonna Die (In Paris)

You ask yourself, how can I be here? And yet here you are: persistently, agonizingly, willingly. And you also need to stop reading Ginsberg if you don’t want to lose your mind entirely.

We’re All Gonna Die (In Paris)

I’ll wait here, you go to work, and when you’re home we can see which way the wind blows
We can walk through Belleville at sundown, check the view and feel like heroes
Or meet your friends and drink too much, watch the sky grow dark as it’s lit up by the city
Dance all night, sleep on the couch, find our way back home through pigeon shit on Sunday

And being here with you is like keeping my eyes open in the salty wind on the prow of a fast boat
Staying wide awake letting worlds end, hearts break, staggering through mine fields with the radio on

Well this city makes me crazy, it’s a midden heap of old bones and harsh opinions (oh the money and the shame)
And the pulsing airless metro that burns under these streets like so many ravaged arteries and veins
Ancient monuments to a terrifying god; you fought a bar fight beneath a glowing cathedral
All the altitudes and angles, gilded angels’ tombs, heads rolling, panties flashing in the dense and sweaty brawl

And being here with you is like keeping my eyes open in the salty wind on the prow of a fast boat
Staying wide awake letting worlds end, hearts break, staggering through mine fields with the radio on

“Courage,” you roar, “throw yourself in and finish what you start.
The same laws of physics apply here, the same molecules compose us,
Even thousands of miles away, even naked in the dark.”

And being with you here is like watching helpless as you break your back lifting Moloch to the sky
Staying wide awake as my world breaks over and over and over and we’re all gonna die
Singing doo, doo, doo doo de doo doo, doo doo doo de doo, and we’re all gonna die!
Singing doo, doo, doo doo de doo doo, doo doo doo de doo, yeah we’re all gonna die!

But when we dance you are light as cigarette smoke and seagulls and suddenly I know
Freedom and grief are two sides of the same coin: the getting low, the letting go
And you kids got something sweeter and more sacred than you could know in these cobble stone streets
But if this is it, if this is the place to be, then why do you dream of the cold, wild sea?

And being here with you is like keeping my eyes open in the salty wind on the prow of a fast boat
Staying wide awake letting worlds end, hearts break, staggering through mine fields with the radio on
Singing doo, doo, doo doo de doo doo, doo doo doo de doo, doo de doo doo de doo
Singing doo, doo, doo doo de doo doo, doo doo doo de doo, doo de doo doo de doo

(c) Kesia Nagata 2018

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