Pick Up a Book

Words: Sherman Dorn
Tune: "Urban Legends," Puzzlebox

I make my dough where flourescents are bright
and learning all happens inside,
for I teach in a college to light student nights
when they'd better crack books and not Coors,
and the real books aren't given enough due, you're right,
and the students expect to pass by
and the secret to knowledge is much seen as blight, so we'd better go shout, low and high:

(Chorus:)
What to do . . .
You just have to pick up a book.
Get a clue . . .
You just have to pick up a book.

Now the median teenager passes through grades
on worksheets and multiple choice
and shops where the tv and radio bade
to buy herself cheap, fancy toys.
Her work is a thing to save sixty-nine cents
and hope that it's priced below list.
Ask her philosophy—then she gets tense.
She barely knows what she has missed.

(Chorus)

When a nation's anti-intellectual drift
is so bad that Oprah is praised
for mentioning books on her day tv shift
'cause everyone is so amazed,
and the front-runner cannot remember the time
that he opened some covers and read,
equality's shunning the deep and sublime.
You're dumb though your neck ain't that red.

(Chorus)

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