My Music Monday: (You Think You've Got It) Rough

I quoted a little bit of this song a while back, but I thought I'd put the whole thing out there, annotated for the curious. I will be playing this with the Portage Road Songwriter's Guild at the Coffee House on May 7, if you'd like to hear it live. If you don't live in or near Milwaukee, and don't want to fly in for the show, you'll have to wait until I record my next CD. Sorry.

(You Think You’ve Got It) Rough
© 2004 Jay Bullock

Sparrow caught a cold like falling down, didn’t see the floor
Didn’t see the doctor, the free clinic isn’t anymore
Thinking, Gotta go to work today, to pay the day care, gotta pay the rent
Twenty thousand people every year go the way that Sparrow went
That’s a whole new 9/11 every other month
And you think you’ve got it rough

Rabbit chased his dream to the memory hole, watched it disappear
Looking for a nicer farmer to guard the gardens here
He was blown north by a cold draft from his red state
Found himself at the holy site, kneeling at World Trade
Rabbit quit his chase at the barrel of his gun
And you think you’ve got it rough

You control the church the TV
You control the courts and DC
You wear the flag like it’s some kind of shield
You want the gubmint off your back
You want the spend without the tax
You want to play both hands of the deal

Meanwhile . . .

Fox is in his sandy hole, sandy helmet, sandy boots
You put a magnet on your car, and that’s all you do
Every night he prays he’ll live to see the son he doesn’t know
Every night you pray to the god of your favorite TV show
And Fox is going house to house looking for who knows what
And you think you’ve got it rough

You’d rather try to keep one down than to bring one hundred up
And you think you’ve got it rough

Sometimes I just want to stop and scream “Enough”
And you think you’ve got it rough