Mark Kozelek & Petra Haden – Parakeet Prison lyrics

Fell asleep with a headache, just woke up and I'm feeling better now
I fell asleep watching The Seventies on Netflix
Jim Jones, John Gacy, Son of Sam, the Manson Trial
There's more but I fell asleep, but I was a kid then
So I remember a lot of it anyhow, just like you did
I was in kindergarten in 1972 when Duran fought Kenny Buchanan at msg in New York
The results flash across the tv, and in 1974 I was 7
And Richard Nixon resigned, and I was 8, and Vietnam ended in 1975

I thought about you growing up in the Bronx, did you fear Son of Sam?
What was your first concert? Mine was a Doobie Brothers
My mom took me and some others and that part was nice
And I walked around for a while by myself and I saw a shocking amount of sex
Going on back in the trees, girls down on their knees
Guys with their backs against the trees

Whoa oh oh, listen to the music
Whoa oh oh, listen to the music
Whoa oh oh, listen to the music
Whoa oh oh, listen to the music

Lots of music centered my first live concert experience
My first attempt at a sexual experience was when two older girls
Took me and a friend across Millers Road in Massillon, Ohio
It was a field back then, and there was a small hill
And beyond the hill, we were smoking and the girls asked us
"Do you guys have hard-ons?"
We never heard the term, didn't know what it meant
We asked them, "What are hard-ons?"
And they smirked and after a while, one girl shrugged her shoulders to the other
And very slowly, the four of stood up and left
The girls were walking ahead of us, as if we didn't exist
Down the street, they crossed
They looked so tall as we trailed behind them
"What's a hard-on? What's a hard-on?" they were asking each other
At seven years old, we smoked cigarettes
But we didn't know what the term "hard-on" meant

So yeah, I remember these things when I was 4, 5, 6, and 7
What do you recall of those years, Kevin?

I remember Frazier, Frazier, Frazier from the kid across the street
Whose smoke and joke beat Ali
In 1972 on tv, Frazier was saying that Ali was taunting him in the rain
Frazier said, "Ali was saying to me
'Don't you know that I'm God? Don't you know that I'm God? '"
Frazier had a witty reply, but I don't remember what it was, do you?

As a kid, did you ever go to the zoo?
I have no memories of ever going to a zoo with you
But we went to an enormous barn where my dad bought us parakeets so many times
So many times because they always died
They'd never last a week, those parakeets, from what we called Parakeet Prison
I hated the guy who owned it, but looking back on it now
He was just a parakeet supplier in Ohio, trying to make a living
But yeah at the time, I hated that guy
He and my dad would talk for what seemed like hours and hours
In that big smelly barn that smelled like a pigsty
An eternity of metal cages coated with bird shit
Thousands of iridescent birds fluttering and fluttering
Feathers floating through the air, like a bomb went off
The crud got into our lungs and we choked on parakeet feathers

While my dad and him kept talking and talking, big smiles on their faces
The guy always had these gross green clothes covered in bird shit
He looked like a walking Picasso, I mean Jackson Pollock
But "Picasso" rhymes better with "clothes"
And "Picasso" rhymes better with "coming home"
Taking turns vomiting privately, never letting dad know
Dad was obsessed with us having parakeets that would live
He kept trying and trying, but they kept dying
Don't know if it was the temperature at home or the Ohio climate
But eventually we were so tormented by those trips to buy those dying birds
We'd be awake all night, dreading going back to Parakeet Prison

One morning, our dad woke us up, so pumped up to go get more parakeets
We were scared to tell him we didn't want to go back there anymore
I was a brother, so I did all the talking
If my dad was triggered, I wanted to be the one to take the beating
I said, "Dad, the parakeets keep dying, we don't want to go back there anymore"

Dad went easy on us, I could see his heart in his eyes
The parakeets dying was breaking our hearts
But he wanted us to have something colorful and vibrant
To think of him fondly while he was out of town
That amounted to us flushing dead parakeets down the toilet
In addition to our dad being gone

My first movie was went my mom's friend somehow snuck us into to Jaws
I just remembered that it had to be kept secret
She said she was taking us to some mall in some far away suburb to shop
Her husband was strict, and her fear of her getting caught and her nervousness
Eclipses my memory of the movie
So Kevin, what do you remember of your life between the ages of 4 and 7?

[Kevin Corrigan]
I don't know how Frazier replied to Ali during that fight at msg
But I lived on a steep hill called Loring Place
One day, water came rushing down the gutter on my side of the street
Flowing beneath the Pintos and the Cutlass Supremes
And charging down Loring Place to the main avenue, Fordham Road
Someone had opened a hydrant up the hill
But to me, the North Pole had melted
The Watergate had broke, the one I'd been hearing about
The water from Watergate coming from the top down
How could such a thing happen? Was safety an illusion?
How long before the flood waters rose
And before it reached the 6th floor of the building where I lived?

[Kevin Corrigan]
I'm pretty sure the first movie I saw was in a movie theater, on Valentine
It was The Towering Inferno
I remember the fire blazing out of control from the middle of the building
Working its way up, people trapped on the top floor above the fire
They were sitting ducks, their only chance of survival
Was to blow up the tanks on the roof that held the building's water supply
And hope it was enough to stop the fire and not drown themselves in the process
Tying themselves down to keep from getting washed away

[Kevin Corrigan]