Franz Nicolay : First-Person Spectacular

First-Person Spectacular

My heroes have always been laughingstocks
Stuck between the stalls and the stage
Living your life is like humming a song
be in tune with yourself, the words will follow along

We live our lives in the first-person spectacular
It’s a rough road and you’re my fellow-traveller
A foreign country and we’re the ambassadors
An unknown language, a proud vernacular
It’s our life in the first-person spectacular

Who strokes the belly, who scourges the back
Who has lily-pad money and who’s in the black
When language goes walking it comes when you call
Clean beasts by sevens, the fortunate fall

First toast to health, second to money, third toast to love, the fourth—
Well, it’s funny you asked
Pour another round—whatever, surprise us
The fourth is to crazy love
And the trouble it buys us

Many are the means of courage and poverty
For temporary gentlemen in sourwood country
Stretched over the doorway, the sound of applause
Fragile and precious, bright golden gauze
For the ones who taught the workers to whistle in key