Reading Legends

Words: Sherman Dorn, 2000
Music: "Urban Legends" (Paul Kwinn)
      D                         A7
Well, I make my dough where flourescents are bright
    G                 A7
and miracles happen indoors,
      D                     A7
for I teach in a college to guide student nights,
          G            A7            D
when they better crack books and not Coors.
        G                         D
And the real books aren't given e-nough due—you're right—
    G                       A7
and students expect to pass by,
        D                         A7
and the secret to knowledge's too rarely in sight,
        G         A7             D
so we'd better go shout, low and high:

(chorus)
        D ---- G
What to do?
    D                      A7
You just have to pick up a book.
      D ---- G
Get a clue:
    D            A7        D
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,
and work is a thing to save sixty-nine cents
and hope that it's priced below list.
But 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's so darned amazed,
and the president cannot remember the time
that he opened a cover and read,
then equality's shunning the deep and submlime.
You're a fool though your neck ain't that red.

(chorus)
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