Jen Kearney

Lyrics

Sitting in a Chinese restaurant
Trying to decide just what I want
And the cartoon zodiac placemat says I was born in the year of the Ox
Linty quarter flipped in the jukebox plays “She's a twentieth century Fox” oh yeah oh yeah...

By the clink of the buffet plates
I read the story of the Emperor's birthday
Toiling strong and silent
To do more than I say

And so the fable goes
I let the rat and the cat
Convince me to let them on my strong back
And carry them across the water to our ordered fates

And man I sure feel yoked up
Choked up at the site
Of the drowning scapegoats
That are failing to thrive
Thrashing just to keep alive
In a watery debt they don't own
And I'm thrown, I've grown, it's known
That this naiveté cover's blown

I wish someone would
I wish someone would

Set Olly olly oxen free baby
'Cause the thing I hide is the love I seek
Hidden in the mud of futile archaeology
Moving as slow as the song from a broken beak
Of a bird that don't fly no more

I wonder if I'll make it
Feeling the weakness that though I'm a beast of burden
Sometimes, sometimes, sometimes it's got to be laid down

And now the rat has pushed the cat off my back-
A common abomination
And just like that friends become enemies
Just like that

And man I sure feel yoked up
Choked up at the site
Of the drowning scapegoats
That are failing to thrive
Thrashing just to keep alive
In a watery debt they don't own
And I'm thrown, I've grown, it's known
That this naiveté cover's blown

I just wish someone would

Set Olly olly oxen free baby
'Cause the thing I hide is the love I seek
Hidden in the mud of futile archaeology
Moving as slow as the song from a broken beak
Of a bird that don't fly no more

So I'm sitting in a Chinese restaurant
With my song scribbled on a placement
Stained with hot mustard and duck sauce

And my fountain pen meets its messy end
Connecting my weary thoughts
And I wonder what the shrinks would see in
These here ink blots