The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

I’m riding a bike down Seventh Avenue, against traffic.
Along the sidewalks, girls in white dresses walk and talk,
with dogs and boys and shopping bags.

To my right is water, brick buildings to my left
the ride is like a song – it keeps happening –
I enjoy the view while I can
One minute later and its gone, replaced

In the evenings, I tell jokes uptown
Long and complicated jokes about Wittgenstein
and Nietzche – I leap tall buildings in a single bound –

Lately, I’ve been learning how to yo-yo, yo-yo,
makes it easier to walk the dog.

And when I ride my bike on Seventh Avenue,
I where an American flag on the back of my back
but instead of stars, it says
If you can read this, you’re too close

Lyrics by Conor Oberst

Your class, your caste, your country, sect, your name or your tribe
There’s people always dying trying to keep them alive
There are bodies decomposing in containers tonight
In an abandoned building where
A squatter’s made a mural of a Mexican girl
With fifteen cans of spray paint in a chemical swirl
She’s standing in the ashes at the end of the world
Four winds blowing through her hair

But when great Satan’s gone, the whore of Babylon
She just can’t sustain the pressure where it’s placed
She caves

The Bible’s blind, the Torah’s deaf, the Qur’an is mute
If you burned them all together you’d be close to the truth still
They’re poring over Sanskrit under Ivy League moons
While shadows lengthen in the sun
Cast on a school of meditation built to soften the times
And hold us at the center while the spiral unwinds
It’s knocking over fences, crossing property lines
Four winds cry until it comes

And it’s the sum of man
Slouching towards Bethlehem
A heart just can’t contain all of that empty space
It breaks, it breaks, it breaks

Well, I went back to my rented Cadillac and company jet
Like a newly orphaned refugee, retracing my steps
All the way to Cassadaga to commune with the dead
They said, “You’d better look alive”
And I was off to old Dakota where a genocide sleeps
In the black hills, the bad lands, the calloused east
I buried my ballast, I made my peace
Heard four winds leveling the pines

But when great Satan’s gone, the whore of Babylon
She just can’t remain with all that outer space
She breaks, she breaks, she caves, she caves