Slid out of my dreams like a baby out of the nurse's hands
   onto the hard floor of day
   I'd been wearing OJ's gloves and I couldn't get them off
   It was too early but I couldn't sleep
   showered, dressed, stepped out into the heat
   the parrot things on the porch next door
   announced my arrival on Chartres Street
   with their finest rendition of squealing brakes
   Down in Kaldi's café the newspaper headlines promised new revelations
   about Prince Charles' Amex account
   A morose youth in old-time Austrian drag stares past his moustache at the ground
   and last night's punks and fetish kids all tattoos and metal bits
   and in the other corner (wearing the white trunks)
   today's tourists already sweating
  
   Deep in the city of the saints and fools
   Pearls before pigs and dung become jewels
   I sit down with tigers and sit down with lambs
   None of them know who exactly I am
  
   I've got this thing in my heart
   I must give it today
   It only lives when you give it away
  
   Languid mandala of the ceiling fan
   teases the air like a slow stroking hand
   Study the faces, study the cards
   Study the shadow creeping over the yard
  
   I've got this thing in my heart
   I must give it today
   It only lives when you give it away
  
   Trouble with nations, trouble with relations
   Where you gonna go for some illumination?
   Too much to carry too much to let go
   Time goes fast learning goes slow
  
   I've got this thing in my heart
   I must give it today
   It only lives when you give it away