The day that Elvis died was like a mercy killing
America breathed a sigh of relief
We knew all about the drugs and the Vegas shows
And there wasn’t much of anything that looked like grief
And I guess he should’ve done like James Dean did
‘Stead of putting on weight and sinking down, down, down
It’s my 20th birthday today.
Sometimes I wish I was smarter than I am
With 20 years, Gauß already had shown it’s possible to construct a regular Heptadecagon, Ramanujan could calculate the Euler-Mascheroni constant in his head to 15 decimal places and Galois came up with the theory named after him—he’d die soon after.
I haven’t even published a single paper. (I’m working on it, but I only realized this a week ago and couldn’t get anything done in between. I’m sorry.)
And now it’s too late to crash
Too late to burn
Too late to die young
I’m admittedly still on my first apartment, first car and in the first city. Probably soon in the second apartment, second car and second city—if that is easy, shall I perform induction on life?
Can you name the last good film Marlon Brando made
While trying to keep his kid from going to jail
And the old people in the street are telling you
Don’t become like me, but every day you creep a little bit closer
Geez, soon I’m thirty.
And now it’s too late to crash
Too late to burn
Too late to die—young
NP: Dan Bern—Past Belief