The Folkstory Death, As Told By Mexican Bob Dylan

[Verse 1]

There’s a town called Imagination
Somewhere far left of New Orleans
I spent time there as a teenager
I remember constant yellow mornings
/
In the press, I read the President,
That boy prince of Tennessee,
Had found out there was a West And
declared it our enemy
/
So they sent an expedition
To the borders of Imagination
They came with guns, heroin, and treaties
And all the beauty of a nation
/
A little girl left her tennis shoes
As everyone fled the march
They had been protesting the war
Which had invited one to start
/
Zachary Taylor and his boys
Goths and vandals full of rage
They held Lopez on hot asphalt
And fried him like an egg
/
As they stormed the capital
The Spaniards raised a cross
They said something about redemption
And lopped a head straight off
/
He stood that man sideways
And murdered him on an order
Then stole a painting and sword
And fled back across the border

The newspapers, the union men
Watched from across the street
As the barrios took the courthouse
Guns interrupted the speech

[Verse 2]

Holding a dying Kennedy,
They had finally called her bluff
She said I can feel it in my bones,
Now, the ante has been upped
/
I was in Napa California
When I finally heard the news
I was drinking La Croix like water,
While they sieged Vera Cruz
/
I came back too late you know
To see anything but the smoke
Just Henry Crabbs’ head pickled
And recently emptied rope
/
We left to hide in Chimayo
She held me in her arms
A bloody sacrilegious thing
Her little pagan charm
/
Now it’s been a string of defeats
Since they took Imagination
Joan of Arc does shows in Texas
The Cubans are anti-immigration
/
Orosco’s off in New York
He writes me but I don’t read it
We tell all these different stories
As if we’d actually seen it
/
I hear fire in the distance
With all the beauty of a nation
I’m tryin to get back out to
That town called Imagination

By Artemisio Romero y Carver