STREET DOGS - FINAL TRANSMISSION

He had just turned nineteen yesterday
Wanted to be a school teacher someday
Came from a small and modest town
Had never before traveled abroad

He signed on the promise of a college fund
Pop and Mom begged him to stay at home
The last time they saw him was at an airport
He hugged his distraught mother a final time

He went abroad to serve when he was only nineteen
Reality caught up with him, stole a heart full of dreams

He’s never gonna get a chance to chase all those hopes
Lost them all amidst this war and smoke
Can you hear the sound of youth negated?
Watch on TV names are taken
Mother, Mother
My final transmission

Parris Island was plain hell on earth
Got gunny yelling at him, “better prove your worth”
Moved on to Baghdad about six months on
Caught an IED today, now he is gone

He went abroad to serve when he was only nineteen
Reality caught up with him, stole a heart full of dreams

He’s never gonna get a chance to chase all those hopes
Lost them all amidst this war and smoke
Can you hear the sound of youth negated?
Watch on TV names are taken
Mother, Mother
My final transmission

Dad and Mom, I am your only loving son
Hid a written final transmission under my helmet
Love you both in heart and mind
A better set of parents no boy could ever find
Weep for me and say thy prayers
Remember me through all your years
Only got to serve for six months on and
If you’re reading this I have passed and gone

So I harbor my final request
A letter in my memory please send
Off to the President and all his men
Begging him with others to bring the troops back home!

He’s never gonna get a chance to chase all those hopes
Lost them all amidst the war and smoke
Can you hear the sound of youth negated?
Watch on TV names are taken

He’s never gonna get a chance to chase all those hopes
Lost them all amidst this war and smoke
Can you hear the sound of youth negated?
Why are all those young lives taken?
Mother, Mother
My final transmission

HOW COULD I HAVE DOUBTED

I stopped looking for you
I stopped waiting for you
I stopped dying for you
and I started dying for myself

I aged rapidly
I became fat in the face
and soft in the gut
and I forgot that I ever loved you

I was old
I had no focus, no mission
I wandered around eating and buying
bigger and bigger clothes
and I forgot why I hated
every long moment that was mine to fill

Why did you come back to me tonight

I can’t even get off this chair
Tears run down my cheeks
I am in love again
I can live like this

  — Leonard Cohen (b. 1934), Canadian poet, composer, author