A Man From No Time Or Place
By Michael Walsh
A Man From No Time Or Place copyright2024 Michael Walsh
In the muzzle flash of her shotgun shack
Memphis Mary shook the rattle of a diamondback
Conjurin’ spirits of my lives past
She grabbed my hand, cried out with a gasp
I killed the King’s coachmen, stole their guns
Rode out of Versailles as The Revolution spun
down the road of ravens and blood
to dance with le guillotine in the Paris mud
(chorus)
My past lies up ahead
My future I can’t outrun
I’m a man from no time or place
One history has shunned
My soul on trial for all the wrong I’ve done
The Fates hung me out to dry
Between the centuries I’ve swung
I’m a tidal wave in a suitcase
A punk in a Peruvian jail break
As The Shining Path fell from grace
they sharpened their teeth on my mistakes
I walked 17 miles across a machete
Slept in a gun barrel cool and steady
Got a lone wolf’s cry, a book of lies
A sawed-off future, a dream that won’t die
The road to freedom, honchos hid the signs
Alabama’s burning in 1963
MLK’s sparkling words ring
as Jim Crow boiled the mercury
Neo-Nazis and tin men in dragon wings
Segregation sermons and M16s
At 13 hatred threw its shackles on me
My black brothers’ bodies in the trees
The Fates cracked the whip, stripped the streets
Gave me cuts that do not bleed
Drowning gilded memories
This day a flashing century
My grief a public enemy
Politicians greased with Vaseline
Lady Justice on her hands and knees
beaten ‘til she couldn’t see
Jacked on Benzedrine and dopamine
with Baudelaire’s Flowers and gasoline
I torched Precinct Seventeen
and ran home as fire bells rung
(chorus)
My past lies up ahead
My future I can’t outrun
I’m a man from no time or place
One history has shunned
My soul on trial for all the wrong I’ve done
The Fates hung me out to dry
Between the centuries I’ve swung
I married a Beijing widow maker, the moon stole the sun
Queen Victoria cut Confucius’s throat, The Opium Wars begun
Jade’s father was shot for smugglin’, they beheaded his sons
In scorched cane fields where water’s thick as blood
Wild-eyed shaman sang to the beat of leather drums
The tigers of truth were coming for me on their mad circlin’ run
My wife slipped away, in the morning I was hung
(chorus)
My past lies up ahead
My future I can’t outrun
I’m a man from no time or place
One history has shunned
My soul on trial for all the wrong I’ve done
The Fates hung me out to dry
Between the centuries I’ve swung
In the muzzle flash of her shotgun shack
Memphis Mary shook the rattle of a diamondback
Conjurin’ spirits of my lives past
She grabbed my hand, cried out with a gasp
I killed the King’s coachmen, stole their guns
Rode out of Versailles as The Revolution spun
down the road of ravens and blood
to dance with le guillotine in the Paris mud
(chorus)
My past lies up ahead
My future I can’t outrun
I’m a man from no time or place
One history has shunned
My soul on trial for all the wrong I’ve done
The Fates hung me out to dry
Between the centuries I’ve swung
I’m a tidal wave in a suitcase
A punk in a Peruvian jail break
As The Shining Path fell from grace
they sharpened their teeth on my mistakes
I walked 17 miles across a machete
Slept in a gun barrel cool and steady
Got a lone wolf’s cry, a book of lies
A sawed-off future, a dream that won’t die
The road to freedom, honchos hid the signs
Alabama’s burning in 1963
MLK’s sparkling words ring
as Jim Crow boiled the mercury
Neo-Nazis and tin men in dragon wings
Segregation sermons and M16s
At 13 hatred threw its shackles on me
My black brothers’ bodies in the trees
The Fates cracked the whip, stripped the streets
Gave me cuts that do not bleed
Drowning gilded memories
This day a flashing century
My grief a public enemy
Politicians greased with Vaseline
Lady Justice on her hands and knees
beaten ‘til she couldn’t see
Jacked on Benzedrine and dopamine
with Baudelaire’s Flowers and gasoline
I torched Precinct Seventeen
and ran home as fire bells rung
(chorus)
My past lies up ahead
My future I can’t outrun
I’m a man from no time or place
One history has shunned
My soul on trial for all the wrong I’ve done
The Fates hung me out to dry
Between the centuries I’ve swung
I married a Beijing widow maker, the moon stole the sun
Queen Victoria cut Confucius’s throat, The Opium Wars begun
Jade’s father was shot for smugglin’, they beheaded his sons
In scorched cane fields where water’s thick as blood
Wild-eyed shaman sang to the beat of leather drums
The tigers of truth were coming for me on their mad circlin’ run
My wife slipped away, in the morning I was hung
(chorus)
My past lies up ahead
My future I can’t outrun
I’m a man from no time or place
One history has shunned
My soul on trial for all the wrong I’ve done
The Fates hung me out to dry
Between the centuries I’ve swung
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