Once I dreamed I was Ponce de Leon, and I'd grown so bitter and old,
You whispered, "Baby, I am Eureka, without any redwoods or gold,"
So together we packed up the Airstream with Pepsis, Pall Malls and Moon Pies,
And we lassoed the San Joaquin River, kicked back, went along for the ride.
I dreamed faith was our precious cargo, determination our boat,
We sailed straight on through troubled waters and around the Cape of Good Hope,
Then we dressed ourselves in fringed buckskins, having levelled that brownstone of ours,
Amid the Palos Colorados, we slept 'neath a blanket of stars.
Woke up broken like Brooklyn, the year the bums left,
In the Bronx on a cold day, while our boys tan out west.
Now we fly over junkyards and factories, Denny's and transient hotels,
Above the churches and bars, and video stores, the black smoke and slaughterhouse smells,
Touching down in the golden Sierras, we ate spinach quiches grown there,
I wove a crown of boysenberries through your lemon-scented hair.
Blonde girls in bikinis and snow skis, in the desert, cashed in their chips then filled the Rose Bowl with guacamole,
We took our clothes off and went for a dip,
Bobbed and weaved like old Trolley-Dodgers after reading a policeman his rights,
Then we followed the Duke of Flatbush and scaled the Boyle Heights.
Woke up broken like Brooklyn, the year the bums left,
In the Bronx on a cold day, while our boys tan out west,
Always broken like Brooklyn, after losing the best,
Old sun-bleached bleachers at Ebbets tore the hearts from our chests.
Woke up broken like Brooklyn,
Tore the hearts from our chests,
Woke up broken like Brooklyn.
