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2/6/92- The Community Mobile
2/6/92
L.A.
The Community Mobile
It ends as it began
With a feeling of unknowing
We scatter on the wind to begin,reconvene
Old lives,new lives,families and familiar fossils
Of life before
Like those amateur archaeologists who searched
for the lost city
We discover New York,Los Angeles,Dublin,Tahoe
And the other places misplaced to us
For we have been everywhere but home.
We have seen the U.S. from end to end
It's hard time during the war and after
Canada froze and blew upon us first
Then opened warmly later on;
The shores of Norway were our door
To a Europe vast and changing fast
We played in a golf ball in Stockholm,Sweden
And drank it all in at an Opera House cafe
Our friends and families waited in England
Where Yanks got a taste of their distant past
The violence of Scotland's nighttime lairs
Could not negate it's beauty fair
In Belfast smiles in turmoil shone
Our first trip to a changing war-like zone
In Dublin we were gratefully stranded
With laser guns and flowers many.
On to France with mowable walls,
Roman ruins,dust upon us all
In Germany we scanned the winding Rhine
But rain kept us from the other riverside
Danish mud and Tivoli's treats
We walked Copenhagen's cobbled streets
In Belgium we saw lace galore
And"a million bottles floating"in the air
Holland's knack for everyone's fancy
Emptied many pockets,filled many heads
We invaded a town in the Austrian Alps
And without a rasta,the show went on
You would think that culture was Italy's thing
But portable jungles was what the crew clung on to
When in Geneva you must buy a watch
(I would have traded it for more roof at the gig).
Close to the Danube we saw monster trucks
And our carpenter's color was seen to be red
Dog bites and streets under Prague's moonlit sky
The president showed up in jeans and a tie
In Spain the Ramblas is what I remember the most
The smell and the sound in the air by the coast
The Portuguese show was quite big and loud
(I was hit by an artillery round)...
I've already mentioned the states as you know
But I can't go without mentioning the Central Park show...
Japan was the same for those who had been
The first time visitors disliked the reduction in scale
And the food...
And the people...
Or the crowds...oh...never mind...
Hong Kong's harbor at night on a boat
Made me feel important and decadent
China for some was an alien place
The "soft seat express" took us there and back
Thousands of whistles,no way to suppress that
Or the sadness that a government can stop a performer
To return to a place that spoke English was great
Australia had races and roos and food
That our most finicky eaters could finally eat
Singapore was incredibly clean
Then again why go to jail for littering?
A few of us had an option for Bali
Our spirits were cleansed and our skin bronzed
Just in time for Brazil where the coffee is like cocaine
And the cocaine is like...well,never mind...
The beaches of Uruguay,horseshoes in the sand
The Addams family hotel,it's pool in the sun
B.A. was like Europe,shopping streets long and crowded
Veggies beware! this place is not for you
Mexico City was the inside of a muffler
What good is culture if you can not see it...
Africa's coast gave us beauty and sun
Even if the security dampened our fun
Botswana for some was a taste of the wild
We put out our own fires,bowed and departed.
Here ends the journey we shared together
The community mobile,support group unfailing
We did what so few have ever accomplished;
The show did go on.
Now memories and recordings is what remains
For others to see,for us to remember
The moments not mentioned,too personal and small
Yet the love was so large
And will never totally fade away.
Thank you Paul Simon...
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