First Person Singular

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[chorus]
I'm resigned to the first person singular
Subjunctive mood, future perfect tense
Restrained by lines that define me as rectangular
I'm subdued behind my private fence
The world declines to ever be irregular
It's imbued with the facts of common sense
Yes, I'm resigned to the first person singular
Solitude is my line of last defense

When I look around the sunset, on the edges of the clouds
If I close my eyes quite tightly, I can see
A hand with a pen that is writing on the sky
All the words that I heard when I was free
Free from doubt and free from fear, free to walk away from here
Free from choices that I hadn't had to make
But the choices were all chosen and the roads they led me down
Were the very roads I guess I had to take

Am I really quite as special as I seem to think I am?
Does the world revolve around my central sun?
Can I make this hell a heaven, like I made it into hell?
Am I bound by everything I've ever done?
Slave to fashion, slave to styles, slave to clocks and friendly smiles
The chains they forge are welded to my bones
Like Samson in the temple I'll be blind before I'm free
And when it falls I'll still be all alone

The war that I am waging with the world and with myself
Is a symptom of the conflict, not the cure
But when the dust has settled and I sing the last hurrah
There will never be a moment quite as pure
Pure as crystal, pure as gold, pure at birth, or so I'm told
Pure and simple like the oldest songs of man
Sing it loud and sing it clearly, sing it as it were my own
Sing it proudly and as long as I can