Snowbird

Snowbird was just a little girl once

All tangled up in dandelion hair and polka dots

And a picture book mind full of dreams and designs

And visions of faraway places

Yeah, she drew underwater worlds and cities in the stars

In the Asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars

In felt tips and crayons her little works of art

All promised a future of greatness

She caught the sunlight in her eye

Underneath the winter sky

"I'll paint the world until I die", she said

"One day I'll spread my wings and fly high like a snowbird"

Yes, I will

Her daddy died when she was only ten

But all she cried came out in ink and in pen

She drew charcoal streets leading down to dead ends

Where heads hung low in sorrow

But she was left a small fortune at the reading of the will

About enough for a life and then another life still

And with her mother in a haze of vodka and pills

Snowbird had just dreamed of tomorrow

She caught the sunlight in her eye

Underneath the winter sky

"I'll paint the world until I die", she said

"One day I'll spread my wings and fly high like a snowbird"

Yes, I will

That's right

Years went by and she hit eighteen

And left home for the art-school scene

To paint the people of the shadows and the faces unseen

For her hero was now Egon Schiele

But she did a couple of little canvases and bad super 8

And a conceptual piece that was thirty years too late

It was all she could fit between the dinner and the dates

With dreamers and drummers and dealers

She caught the sunlight in her eye

Underneath the winter sky

"I'll paint the world until I die", and she said

"One day I'll spread my wings and fly high like a snowbird"

Yes, I will

Well, who's that girl in the little black dress?

Her head held high like a real princess

A glimmering, shimmering, coked up mess

A fashion trash, art school failure

Yeah, her fingernails are all there's left to paint in her world

She dishes out the dirt with the party powder girls

Who think love comes in diamonds and wisdom in pearls

And art is just paraphernalia

She's lost the sunlight from her eye

There's only a mirror ball left in her sky

"I'll do what I want till the day that I die

Now see me spread my wings, I can fly high like a snowbird

Snowbird was just a little girl once, she was

Snowbird was just a little girl once

Snowbird was just a little girl once, she was

Snowbird was just a little girl once but now she can fly