O Warden, I surender to you, Your fists cain't hurt me anymore, You know, these hands will never wash, These dirty Death Row floors.
I am the black crow king, Keeper of the forgotten corn, The King!
I just made a simple gesture, They jumped up and nailed it to my shadow, My gesture was a hooker, You know, my shadow's made of timber.
Tupelo-o-o! Hey, Tupelo! You will reap just what you sow.
Well saturday gives what sunday steals, And a child is born on his brother's heels, Come sunday morn the first-born is dead, In a shoebox tied with a ribbon of red.
In a clap-board shack with a roof of tin, Where the rain came down and leaked within, A young mother frozen on a concrete floor, With a bottle and a box and a cradle of straw.
Looka yonder! Looka yonder! A big black cloud come!
Ah've cried one thousand tears, it's true.
Death favours those that favour death.
From the words and the thickets, Come the ghosts of his victims, 'We love you!' 'Ah love you!' This will not hurt a bit.
Here is the hammer, that build the scaffold, and built the box...
When ya done ransackin' his room, Grabbin' any-damn-thing that shines, Throw the scraps down on the street, Like all his books and his notes. All his books and his notes and all the junk that he wrote, The whole fucken lot goes right up in smoke.
O you recall the song ya used to sing-a-long, Shifting the river-trade on that ol' steamer, Life is but a dream!
The mo-o-o-on, its huge cycloptic eye, Watches the city streets contract, twist and cripple and crack.
Straight in the arms of the city goes Huck, Down the beckonin' streets of op-po-tunity, Whistling his favorite river-song... And a bad-blind nigger at the piano puts a sinister blooo lilt into that sing-a-long, Huck senses something's wrong!