"Bartender's Scar"

Coyotes look to an industrial sky
While poets pine
Conceptualize the pioneer days
Ministers walk the invisible line
Tell me one more thing God did for mankind

Opposite the trail mix
Staling on the bar
I catch a glimpse of the bartender's scar
Beneath his high collar
"That's just proof that I exist,
In one way or another"
She smothers him into believing
That he can't live without her
She can't live without him,
So, I don't doubt her

Art is the story
So tried and true
Whose dues have been paid
But never proved
Blues hold the rhythm
The secret code of life
Whose knife shoved so deep in your back
It's a struggle just to survive

I am gagged and blindfolded
Perfected and molded to be
A perfect ideal of humanity
I have left so many places
I can't even count all the lives
I've lived as an attempt
To feel alive

Man does strive for perfection
I hold this one truth true
But not as close to my heart as God
As you
Who were you before you crossed the river?
Who were you in dawns deepest blues?
Who were you when the old man poured his heart out
Just after his poor old heart broke in two?

Should the island shudder
Plunge itself back into the sea
Should the ape man de-evolve
Turn the wheels of human history
Should the sun burn out
Leave nothing but complacency
Pieces of who we used to be
Nothing but pieces of who we used to be