Turtle Trails

When your head gets twisted
When your mind grows numb
When you think you’re too old or too young
Too smart, or too dumb
You feel like you’re lagging behind
Or loosing your pace, a slow motion crawl
In life’s busy race

When the winds got you sideways
With one hand holding on
And the other starts slipping,
All the feeling is gone

The sidewalks starts curling
The street gets too long
You start walking backward
Although you know that it’s wrong
Lonesome comes up as down goes the day
And tomorrow’s morning seems so far away

The sky cries water, and your drain pipes are pouring
The lightening is flashing and the thunder is crashing
The windows are rattling, breaking, the rooftop shaking
And your whole world is slamming and banging
Your minuets of sun turn to hours of storm
You tell yourself, you sometimes say
I never knew, no one told me it was going be this way

You start getting chills and you’re dripping from sweat
You’re looking for something you haven’t quite found yet
Your jackhammer pounds from your head to your feet
But you need it badly as it grinds though the street
Bells ring loudly but you can’t hear a beat
And you think your ears might have been hurt
And your eyes have turned filthy from the slight blinding dirt

You figured you’d failed in yesterdays rush
You were faked out and fooled and facing the flush
All the while you’ve been holding three queens
It’s making you mad, it’s making you mean
This bouncing around in a pinball machine

There’s something on your mind that you want to be saying
Somebody someplace ought to be hearing
But it’s trapped on your tongue, sealed in your head
It bothers you badly when you lay in your bed
No matter how hard you try you just can’t say it
And your scared to your soul that you just might forget it
Your eyes get flooded by the tears in your head
Your blankets and pillows turn to concrete and lead

You’re flat on your belly with your hands tied behind
And then you ‘re face to face with another detour sign
And you ask yourself, just what am I doing
On this road that I’m walking, on this trail that I turning
On this curve I’m hanging, on this pathway I’m strolling
In the space I’m taking in the air I’m inhaling
Am I mixed up too bad, am I mixed up too much or too hard
Why am I walking, where am I running,
What am I saying, what do I know?

I try with my whole soul best never to think these thoughts
Never to let them gain any ground or make my heart pound
But then I know when they are around,
Waiting for a chance to slip and drop down
Because you hear them coming in the night time creeping
And you fear they might catch you sleeping
You jump from your bed from your last chapter of dreaming
And you can’t remember for the best of your thinking
If that was you in your dream that was screaming

You need something special, something different alright
A fast flying plane on a tornado track
To shoot you somewhere and shoot you back
You need a cyclone wind on a steam engine howl
That’s been banging blowing and booming forever
And knows your troubles and hard times are over
You need a grey hound bus that won’t bar any race
That won’t laugh at your looks your voice or your face
You need something to open up a new door
And show you something you’ve see before
But over looked a hundred times or more
You need something to open your eyes
To make it known, that it’s you and no one else that owns
That spot that you’re standing, that space that you’re taking
That the world hasn’t got you beat, it an’t got you licked
No matter how many times you might get kicked

The truth is, you need hope and you need it bad
The trouble is you know it too good
You’re getting the chills because you can’t find it on a dollar bill
You won’t find it on Macy’s window seal
You won’t find it on any rich kids road map
It’s not going to be in any fat kids fraternity house
You won't get it from a Hollywood diet,
You can’t find it in any nightclub or yacht club
Your bound to tell that no matter how hard you rub
You won’t find it on any lottery ticket stub
It’s not in the rumors people are telling you
It’s not in the pimple lotion people are selling you
In not in a million dollar house or a movie star’s blouse
You can’t find it on the golf course
It’s not in the fifty star generals, flipped out phonies
Who would turn you in for a tenth of a penny
The ones that wheel and deal and whorl and twirl
Play games with each other in this sand box world
You can’t find it in the no talent fools,
Who run around gallant and make all the rules
It’s not in the ones who don’t have any talent
but think they do, and think they’re fooling you
You yell at yourself, you throw down your hat
And say, I don’t want to be like that
Is there anyone out there that knows how I feel
Good Lord almighty, that stuff isn’t real

That isn’t my game, it’s not my race
I’m looking for a different place
Where do you look for this lamp that’s burning
Where do you look for this oil well that’s gushing
Where do you look for this candle that’s glowing
Life’s a journey and the destination is going

Bob Dylan, Last Thoughts