all aboard

The new kids on the block hang out on the corner,
play hackeysack as the waitress from the café
takes an order from the fattest man in the world.
The bladers and the skaters weave through the traffic.
The grungy little hippies all toke outside the gazebo.

I can never go back to the way it used to be.
I'm stuck in high gear, going forward, getting older,
steaming onward, all aboard.

They say that time's a point in a line
where history meets the horizon.
If so I'm a joy filled boy. I swing over the deep water.
Suddenly I'm back at summer camp the year that Elvis died.
We choked on cigars behind the mess hall.
We experimented with alcohol.

I can never go back to the way it used to be.
I'm stuck in high gear, going forward, getting older,
steaming onward, all aboard.

I wish I could show you all the scenes that I have seen.
All the pictures I could draw my friend,
all the songs that I could sing.
These are the things I have done,
the trails I have run, the prizes won.
If I knew now what I knew then
I'd just do it all over again.

I'm not broken yet.
I refuse to forget the joy.
I'm still a boy inside.

When I'm an old man
I'm gonna sit on my rocker on the porch,
smoke home-grown, drink dandelion wine
with a fender strat sitting on my lap.
And when those whippersnappers whip by
I'm gonna turn up the volume on my amp.
In my slippers and my housecoat,
I'm gonna match them note for note.

And we never really die, we just lose our lustre.
We are beams of light going forward, getting older,
steaming onward, all aboard.