Patti Smith — Memento Mori

The fan whirling like the blades of a copter Lifting into the skies above a foreign land Fire and iron soaked with the bodies of so many friends Johnny waved. He was on his way home He waved good-bye to his comrades in arms And all the twisted things he had seen He waved good-bye And the blades hit something Maybe just fate but the blades hit The copter went up in flames And Johnny never went marching home And Johnny never went marching home They took his name and they carved it on a slab of marble With several thousand other names All the fallen idols The apples of their mother's eye Just another name Meanwhile back on the burning shore Johnny's comrades stood speechless They looked with misbelieving eyes Cause there were bits of metal and the embers The embers of his eyes fanned out in the air Black dust flames. Oh Johnny Someday they'll make a movie about you And in the making of that movie, some mad apocalypse It will become even stranger than the simple act Just a boy going up. Up. Up Just a boy going. Up. Up In flames the smoke Just another life Just another breath And who'll remember Oh eternity now As eternal as a sheet of marble Eternal as a slab On a green hill And your name And all your fallen brothers And all the ones not cut All the ones remembered Only in the hearts A mother a father a brother A sister a lover son daughter Young man shall not fade shall not fade Your ancestors salute you greet you And the gods of your ancestors salute you Having been formed by the mind of your ancestors The gods of your ancestors salute you Having been formed by your ancestors The gods of your ancestors salute you They draw you in They draw you through They draw they draw you Through that golden door Come on boy We remember you We conceived you We conceived of your breath We conceived of the whole human race And we conceived it to be a beautiful thing Like a tulip bending in the wind Sometimes it comes back to us In the form of the hand filled with dust Comes back in the form of a smitten child Our raped daughters The broken bones Souls cleaved of hearts They come back to us Our hands are filled With their rotting tissues But we turn not our backs We press our lips Into their cancer Into the dust Into the remains of each one And that love is there And will greet you Come on in boy It's eternal love Well here go ahead Run through that plane Oh man running through your mind You took a cat You took a life You took it by the tail And you swirled it around your head And you thrashed it You smashed the life out of it Then you knew that would be your own But you wanted to feel the dying Because you knew You would feel your own You would feel your own But you're remembered You're remembered You're remembered good We remember We remember We remember Everything