Henry Jamison - Florence Nightingale

[Verse 1]
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?"

[Verse 2]
Anyway, I was reminded of a dream I had
As my confidence came and went
Where all the girls from the nineties
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


[Verse 3]
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
Cus 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-

[Chorus]
Florence Nightingale
Comes in with a lamp
They say, oh oh
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

[Verse 4]
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?
(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

[Chorus]
Florence Nightingale
Comes in with a lamp
They say, oh oh
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

[Verse 5]
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