The Fiery Furnaces – Slavin' Away lyrics

Slavin' away

Slavin' away
All for you my love
And I've nothin to show for it
Cept my dusty old book full of pictures
A dusty old book
Tell me a story
Bout how I wasn't so tired
From my slavin' away

I ran off
Put on corduroy knickers that I got from the coal shovelin' kid
And hitchhiked in a rickety old ford
Hitchhiked in a rattly old norton side car
Down strange roads
In the purrin' rain, as the poet put it
On up to st. Paul
On a cold day in the middle of the fall

And they picked me up for not wearin a dress
And suspended my sentence
If I wore somethin with a strap that was pink
And I scrubbed up on somebody's sink
So now I catch the canadian pacific
And not be too specific, just somewhere up north
And get into lumber and slumber when I like
And in the spring ride down into cheyenne on my bike

I looked out the window
And I stuck my head out the door
And the snow was melting so slow...
And the sky was light but so gray...

Slavin' away
And all for nothin' my love
Cookin and washin in the morning
And startin at 9: 25
I assemble six boxes of little plastic christmas trees
And put in the blue leds
On kid toy cell phones with borg batteries
And then on to the sewing machine
Stick the labels on purple t-shirts
And the arms on pull-over jumpers for the uk

Slavin' away
All for you my love
And I've nothin to show for it
I've nothin to show for it

I could see her lookin in the mirror at me
Wonderin' if it wasn't plain for everyone to see
Nothin ever seemed to turn out how it might be
I could see her doubting now that all had gone and went
That anything she got was equal what that she'd spent
That she never seemed to get back what that she'd lent

Anyway they did have a son
And by the time he was married and I played at his wedding too at holy trinity
I was choir director myself
Rehearsals in the basement twice a week
I demanded we'd be in peak condition
And everything seemed to be going quite well
I got along well with the priest...