Song Description

I wrote this on my mother's birthday while I was locked up, during which time I gradually began to have doubts of ever returning -- mentally or bodily. Naturally it is about everything dear to us when we are powerless to help them, but I also use the inability to return home as a metaphor for (both as individuals and as a society) our struggle to return to a time and/or place of safety. To anyone interested in this theme, I would recommend Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad wherein he discusses visiting dungeons where he read the graffiti of the prisoners on the walls.

Lyrics

CANÃ?Â?T GET BACK HOME

I can't get back to home.
I can't get back to home.

Today's my mom's birthday
And I can't get back to home.
I guess it is my worst day
Cause I know she sits alone,
Watching her life on replay
In her chair by the telephone--
A vain watch on the telephone.

I can't get back to home
I can't get back to home

Today the trees are budding
In the grove in my back yard.
I know the shrubs need cutting
Before they've gone too far,
And my dog's about through bucking
When he thinks he hears my car.

At home they say it's Christmas
But I really have lost track.
Around the tree they're listless--
My coat's there on the hat rack,
And receding in the distance
Fades the road that takes me back.

Fades the road that used to take me back.
I just can't get back.