I was dreaming about hemingway
and wondering why he quit before he was done
at the end of a shotgun, he just gave up
his final chapter left unfinished and rough
well, so it goes/ that before the sun rose
he pulled himself from his bed
and alone in his mind/ his body left behind
he decided he would be better off dead
and after everything that he wrote, he didn’t bother with a suicide note
when before he could always find one true word
so the old man fell
alone in his own hell
somewhere on an idaho morning
and in the distance tolled the bell for whom the money -men were left to sell
the story the man should have told himself
became someone else’s book upon the shelf
Chorus
when out in the streets they mixed truth with lies
to sell what the old man did as glamorous and wise
they said the great one went out in a blaze of glory
while the rest of us were left behind to sell the story
I guess emotion doesn’t matter when your merchandising pain
yet it is done so often we have forgotten who to blame
so left in the hands of others to describe his final hour
we are deprived of how the man himself could have said it with a quiet kind of power
sold as a t-shirt that he could not defend
we don’t have to confront the violence
of the old man’s end
Chorus
or how the truth we know is mixed with lies
lost somewhere between the who and the whys
or the madness in leaving in a blaze of glory
when we are left behind/ to tell the story