Paradise Is Very Fragile

(album: Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass - 2020)

Paradise is very fragile
And it seems like it's only getting worse

Down here in Florida
We're fighting red toxic tides
Mass of fish kills
Not to mention hurricanes and rising sea levels

Back in Los Angeles, things aren't looking much better
My treehouse that'd been standing for 80 years succumbed to the woolsy fire

Who would've thought that this year at 33
You would've been taken out from under me
After all those years?

Built from the ground up, by hand, by your very first owner
Quiet World War One, aviation pilot
I tried to save you but the German Shepherd seemed more important

Paradise is very fragile
And it seems like it's only getting worse

Our leader is a megalomaniac
And we've seen that before
But never 'cause it was what the country deserved

My friends tell me to stop calling 911 on the culture
But it's either that or I 5150 myself

They don't understand
I'm a dreamer
And I had big dreams for the country
Not for what it could do, but how it could feel
How it could think, how it could dream

I know
Who am I to dream for you?
It's just that in my own mind
I was born with a little bit of paradise
I was lucky in that way
Not like my husband
Who was born and raised in hell

I always had something gentle to give
All of me, in fact
It's one of the beautiful things about me
It's one of the beautiful things about nature

But lately I've been thinking that I wish
Someone had told me when I was younger
More about the inhabitants that thrive off of paradise

That should they take too much
There would be nothing left to give
Not everyone's nature is golden and green
And you can't fight what's in your nature

I got to thinking about it as
We were fighting the fires in Agora
But I'm tired of fighting you

Paradise is very fragile
And it's only getting worse

And every time I think of that
I think about the curse bestowed upon Eve, that fateful eve
She took that bite of fruit from that fruitful tree
And this summer night, you in front of me
Makes me contemplate the origins of good and evil

Because you take and you take and you take and you take
But you taste like the beach and a kiss
Candy from my eyes
In my veins you run citrus

Watercolor images of serpents on orange trees
Arise in my midst
Kundalini, you breathe me
I could do this forever

But my heart is very fragile
And I have nothing left to give