Your fan of golden hair oiled with rose and cinnamon As your blood bloomed poppy red across your velvet coat Your deep blue velvet coat Yes, there in Montana prairie grass the Sioux shot Custer down His red scarf tied, his black boots shined How beautiful he looked to the flies, the happy kingdom of flies
Dear Custer there’s a Wal-Mart now where once the grizzlies roamed Mountains of hair spray and cowboy shirts and everyone has a gun Everyone still has a gun But high in the rafters above the lights, red finches, they hide their nests And when our cars drive out of sight they sing symphonies across the night In their forest of heating pipes
And out past the parking lot along the curb in the wilds of weed and trash Great armies of the smallest ants fight battles for the glory of their queen Such a tiny glorious queen But even the empress of the ants for whom ten thousand fall Makes not a sound beneath the blades of our great empire of lawns How quiet is the empire of lawns