It fell from midnight skies
  It drummed on the galvanized
  In the washroom, woman tracked the rain
  Up to the make-up mirror
  Liquid soap and grass
  And Jungle Cardenia crash
  On Pine-Sol and beer...
  It's stifling in here...
  I've got to get some air.
  Back in my hometown
  They would have cleared the floor
  Just to watch the rain come down!
  They're such sky orientated people -
  Geared to changing weather...
  I'm floating off in time
  I'm floating back
  I'm floating back in time.
  When I was three feet tall
  And wide eyed open to it all
  With their tassled teams they came
  To McGee's General Store
  All in their beaded leathers
  I would tie on colored feathers
  And I'd beat the drum like war...
  I would beat the drum like war
  Beat the drum
  I'd beat the drum like war.
  But when the church got through
  They traded their beads for bottles
  Smashed - on Railway Avenue
  And they cut off their braids
  And lost some link with nature
  I'm floating into dreams
  I'm floating back
  I'm floating into dreams
  I dream paprika plains
  Vast and bleak and God forsaken
  Paprika plains
  And a turquoise river snaking.
  (Where crows gaze - vigilant on wires
  Where cattle graze the grasses
  Far from the digits of business hours
  The moon clock wanes and waxes -
  But here all time is stripped away
  Nowhere on these plains
  Is a sprout or an egg in evidence
  To measure loss or gain...
  Only a little Indian band
  Come down from some windy mesa
  No woman to make them fool and child
  No expressions on their faces.
  I'm low in a helicopter
  And the wind from whirling blades
  Flaps their woves blankets
  And flags their raven braids.
  How came they to this emptiness?
  How came they to this dream?
  How came I to this view
  From a flying machine
  Of earth and air and water
  And a band of Indian men
  Without herds or flocks or crops
  Or families or fires to tend?
  Like a phoenix up from ashes now
  A blanket figure springs
  With a fist raised up to turquoise skies
  Like liberty
  And at the point of vanishing
  Where the sky and the earth meet
  A blomb blooms
  Deadly mushroom
  White
  Gold
  Heat
  Like a phoenix up from ashes
  Up from violent mysteries
  And growing 'till the giant blast
  Is to it like a golfer's tee
  There comes a child's beach ball
  And memory takes to toss it up
  To the garage to get it patched
  A pink and yellow beach ball
  Rolling
  Grand
  Detached
  Turning the blues and greens of earth
  From space probe photographs
  I float out of the hovercraft
  Naked as infancy
  And weightless
  And drifting
  Horizontally
  Like a filing to a magnet
  Like the long descent of rain
  I am drawn
  I fall against the bell
  And lose paprika plains
  I suckle at my mother's breast
  I embrace my mothers earth
  I remember perforated blinds
  Over the crip of my birth.
  And just as ancient Eve succumbed
  To reckless curiosity
  I take my sharpest fingernail
  And slash the globe to see
  Below me -
  Vast Paprika plains
  And the snake the river traces
  And a little band of Indian men
  With no expressions on their faces).
  The rain retreats
  Like troops to fall on other fields and streets
  Meanwhile they're sweet talking and name calling
  And brawling on the fringes of the floor
  I spot you through the smoke
  With your eyes on fire
  From J&B and coke
  As I'm coming through the door
  I'm coming back
  I'm coming back for more!
  The band plugs in again
  You see that mirrored ball begin to sputter lights
  And spin
  Dizzy on the dancers
  Geared to changing rhythms
  No matter what you do
  I'm floating back
  I'm floating back to you