Raised on words like "punishment" and "God will get you
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If you don't do what you're told."
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Nuns turned children into fearful right
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handed little
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Servants of the Lord
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And then the atom bomb fell down on Hiroshima, North Dakota
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The year she turned sixteen
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And she said, "There is something very wrong here.
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Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean?
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'Cause I got visions forming in my head
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And I keep hearing what the preacher said
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Said this world will be the death of me
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I know it will, it's bound to be
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Bound to be"
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Satchel full of broken hopes and empty picture postcards
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That she'd never send
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Her mama sitting on the front porch step
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Daddy frowning in the darkened doorway, waving his regret
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Then she was jumping on the Santa Fe, summer night in 1947
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Bound for God knew where
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And she said, "I can see destruction fast approaching.
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I feel it in the air. I feel it in the air.
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And I got visions forming in my head
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(See the blood on the horizon)
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And I keep hearing what the preacher said
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(Said the truth will set you free)
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Said this world will be the death of me
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(I got no one to rely on)
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I know it will, it's bound to be."
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(Except for me...)
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On a road in Valparaiso, she met a hobo named Old John
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They hunkered down in a gazebo, and chose a star to gaze upon
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Old John said he could see her slipping, and he asked her what was wrong
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She said, "The rope I had been gripping turned to sand
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And now it's gone, now it's gone.
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Can't you see the writing on the blood soaked blue horizon
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Plain as VJ day. Hear the barking of the
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Drowning dogs, frozen like so many Eisenhower
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Statues in Pompei. I think I'll take another taste
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Old John, to numb my heart, God knows I'm falling fast as
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Atoms through the sky." She said,
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"This world it sure ain't no place to live in
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But it ain't no place to die. No it ain't no place to die..."
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-----------------
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Bound To Be
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The Gathering Field |