Paddy mcaloon is a man of god
Paddy mcaloon is a Buddha
Paddy don't care paddy knows what's what
Paddy left his home and does what he wants
Paddy loves you and he loves me
Paddy writes and writes and cannot see
He talks poetically and slow, deliberately low
He spins tales of the old sweet America he'll never know
Paddy's hair is long and white
And paddy dreams in a thousand colors late in the night
Paddy knows my soul
He lets it live and die and breathe and choke and jots down every damned and despicable detail
Paddy knows my soul
Paddy lives with me out there on the turnpike
Out past red bank
Out there he's watching me in watchung
And he's singing, he's humming, he's burning with the music
His smoke rising up big billowing clouds that shade the whole country
And bring cold cold rains those freezing refreshing droplets that soak through my clothes and through my skin and into my bones
That kinda cold you only feel when you know paddy's right
Cause paddy always tells the truth but sometimes you pretend he's lying
But paddy knows, he always knows
Paddy sings and dreams
He knows what it means to be so mean
Paddy bleeds and dies a thousand times
Each go around takes its toll on his ears and eyes
And he keeps on writing and wanting and stifling there on the page
There in his prophetic silence, in his personal darkness
He writes of lovely creatures, he knows their pain
And he paints and mixes and stains
And spells out his name in fuzzy megahertz
He looks like a wizard
And I check the news every day to see if he's still alive
For when he goes, so goes a part of me
All those tears and clawing aching pains
Will vanish into the night with his sweet soft voice
And all those hundreds and thousands of unheard verses
Those Melodies that exist only behind paddy's forehead
Will be released into the atmosphere and for forty days the earth will weep
And we'll all feel the cold again