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PAPRIKA PLAINS
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Joni Mitchell
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1
It fell from midnight skies
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It drummed on the galvanized
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In the washroom, women tracked the rain
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Up to the make-up mirror
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Liquid soap and grass
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And Jungle Gardenia crash
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On Pine-Sol and beer ...
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It's stifling in here ...
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I've got to get some air ...
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I'm going outside to get some air
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Back in my hometown
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They would have cleared the floor
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Just to watch the rain come down!
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They're such sky oriented people--
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Geared to changing weather ...
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I'm floating off in time
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I'm floating off
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I'm floating off in time
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When I was three feet tall
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And wide eyed open to it all
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With their tasseled teams they came
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To McGee's General Store
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All in their beaded leathers
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I would tie on colored feathers
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And I'd beat the drum like war ...
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I would beat the drum like war
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I'd beat the drum
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I'd beat the drum like war
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But when the church got through
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They traded their beads for bottles
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Smashed--on Railway Avenue
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And they cut off their braids
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And lost some link with nature
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I'm floating into dreams
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I'm floating off
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I'm floating into my dreams
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I dream paprika plains
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Vast and bleak and God forsaken
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Paprika plains
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And a turquoise river snaking
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(Where crows gaze--vigilant on wires
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Where cattle graze the grasses
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Far from the digits of business hours
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The moon clock wanes and waxes--
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But here all time is stripped away
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Nowhere on these plains
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Is a sprout or an egg in evidence
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To measure loss or gain ...
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Only a little Indian band
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Come down from some windy mesa
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No women to make them food and child
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No expressions on their faces
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I'm low in a helicopter
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And the wind from whirling blades
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Flaps their woven blankets
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And flags their raven braids
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How came they to this emptiness?
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How came they to this dream?
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How came I to this view
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From a flying machine
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Of earth and air and water
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And a band of Indian men
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Without herds or flocks or crops
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Or families or fires to tend?
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Like a phoenix up from ashes now
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A blanket figure springs
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With a fist raised up to turquoise skies
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Like liberty
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And at the point of vanishing
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Where the sky and the earth meet
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A bomb blooms
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Deadly mushroom
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White
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Gold
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Heat
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Like a phoenix up from ashes
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Up from violent mysteries
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And growing 'till the giant blast
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Is to it like a golfer's tee
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there comes a child's beach ball
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And memory takes me back
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to the beach to toss it up
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to the garage to get it patched
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A pink and yellow beach ball
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Rolling
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Grand
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Detached
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Turning the blues and greens of earth
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From space probe photographs
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I float out of the hovercraft
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Naked as infancy
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And weightless
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And drifting
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Horizontally
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Like a filing to a magnet
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Like the long descent of rain
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I am drawn
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I fall against the ball
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And lose paprika plains
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I suckle at my mother's breast
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I embrace my mother earth
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I remember perforated blinds
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Over the crib of my birth
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And just as Eve succumbed
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To reckless curiosity
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I take my sharpest fingernail
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And slash the globe to see
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Below me--
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Vast Paprika plains
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And the snake the river traces
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And a little band of Indian men
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With no expressions on their faces.)
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The rain retreats
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Like troops to fall on other fields and streets
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Meanwhile they're sweet talking and name calling
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And brawling on the fringes of the floor
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I spot you through the smoke
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With your eyes on fire
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From J&B and coke
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As I'm coming through the door
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I'm coming back
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I'm coming back for more!
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The band plugs in again
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You see that mirrored ball begin to sputter lights
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And spin
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Dizzy on the dancers
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Geared to changing rhythms
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No matter what you do
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I'm floating back
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I'm floating back to you!
Joni Mitchell - Paprika Plains
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