(What's this song about?) Well, I went in for some medicine Feelin' like a wounded soldier Deathly pale and a woman did come to my bedside A regular Florence Nightingale But my girlfriend just wasn't having the comparison So I back-pedaled, said "okay then How bout Mary Magdalene?" Anyway, I was reminded of a dream I had as my confidence came and went Where all the girls from the 90's Were singing "Just Around the Riverbend" All along the banks of the Arkansas And I paddled through in a dugout canoe I was a John Smith cartoon, with a strong jaw Listen I'm white, middle-class and male And the dream does tell a tale Of Whiteness dreaming of Whiteness With a want for wisdom that might tip The scale 'cause my friend and I felt an affinity With the tribes in the documentary That plays on a loop in the backmost Wing of the Museum of Natural History But my imperialist didn't suddenly Die he just loosened his tie and took a Knee and Disneyland never made a man That's all just false idolatry that's all just false I- Florence Nightingale Comes in with a lamp, they say On stormy nights when the wound's remembering Talks to me about that photograph Me and my brother on the sidewalk Holding squirt guns and squinting in the sun That was the summer I was nine Well it's a sunny day At Sugar Sugar High School And the quarterback and track star are cuttin' Class and shootin' pool well this is not to Say that they should be in class Still why they have to be such assholes? It's as if we men just want to be Picked up sequentially And held to the breast of a giantess Who stands ten miles out at sea Or, alternatively, we could find success You know really be the best then maybe We could rest upon our father's knee Florence Nightingale Comes in with a lamp, they say On stormy nights when the wound's remembering Talks to me about that photograph Me and my brother on the sidewalk Holding squirt guns and squinting in the sun That was the summer I was nine Mary Magdalene Was at Golgotha, they say She saw the water separate from the Blood and I look at that painting Of him hanging so peacefully with Mary by his bleeding side that was The summer he was 33