Bonnie "Prince" Billy – Look Backward On Your Future Look Forward To Your Past (Guitar)

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Richard was a stout-hearted man, he’d been through the bulk of his life

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He no longer spoke to most of his folks and was abandoned by his wife

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Rolling down the road one night alone, he came upon a terrible sight

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An older woman lay bleeding in the road and her screams about filled the night

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She said: Look backwards on your future and look forward to your past

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Everything upon which you base your faith is made of vapour and it won’t last

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It’s only everything in our shared reality that keeps our souls held fast

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So, look backwards on your future and look forward to your past

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Richard woke the next morning and spoke, he said, there’s something I feel I must do

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He called up all of his natural born kids and all his money from the bank he withdrew

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He changed his mind about everything he’d ever felt about what’s bad and good

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He fixed a loud-speaker to the roof of his car and he sang to everyone he could

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He sang: Look backwards on your future and look forward to your past

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Get your sense of time from the ancient Hawaiians, your sense of self from the hydrogen blast

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You’ll be what came before, you were what is to come, he bellowed out to everyone he passed

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So, look backwards on your future and look forward to your past

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Richard got arrested in Laredo, he was causing too much mischief for the sisters

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He spent an evening in the clink and then went home and turned to drinking – 

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gave his all, yes, he was a double-fister

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The issue was the kind of past he had behind him, most of what he’d spent were wasted days

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The history he faced was an ocean made of empty and a destiny you wouldn’t want to save

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Still, I say: Look backwards on your future and look forward to your past

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If you haven’t gone and made a mess of yourself you just might end up with the last laugh

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Every little dot of p-p-presence and thought for another will give your life class

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So, look backwards on your future and look forward to your past

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This particular assemblage of molecules and memories some day soon may just soon run out of gas

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So, look backwards on your future and look forward to your past