Baez Joan Prison Trilogy (billy Rose) (4:23) Lyrics

Prison Trilogy (billy Rose) (4:23) Lyrics

Billy Rose was a low rider;

 Billy Rose was a night figher

 Billy Rose knew trouble like the sound of his own name

 Busted on a drunken charge

 Drivin' someone else's car

 The local midnight sheriff's claim to fame

 

 In an Arizona jail there are some who tell the tale how

 Billy fought the sergeant for some milk that he demanded.

 Knowing they'd remain the boss

 Knowing he would pay the cost

 They saw he was severely reprimanded

 

 nIn the blackest cell on "A" Block he hanged himself at dawn

 With a note stuck to the bunk head

 Don't mess with me, just take me home.

 

 Come and lay, help us lay young Billy down.

 

 Luna was a Mexican the law called an alien

 For comin' 'cross the border with a baby and a wife

 Though the clothes upon his back were wet

 Still he thought that he could get

 Some money and things that make a life.

 It hadn't been too very long

 When it seemed like everything went wrong

 They didn't even have the time to find themselves a home

 

 This foreigner, a brown-skin male

 Thrown into a Texas jail

 It left the wife and baby quite alone.

 

 He eased the pain inside him with a needle in his arm

 But the dope just crucified him

 He died to no one's great alarm

 Come and lay, help us lay young Luna down

 And we're gonna raze, raze the prisons to the ground.

 

 Kilowatt was an aging con of 65

 Who stood a chance to stay alive

 And leave the joint and walk the streets again

 As the time he was to leave drew near

 He suffered all the joy and fear

 Of leaving 35 years in the pen

 

 And on the day of his release

 He was approached by the police

 Who took him to the warden, walking slowly at his side

 The warden said "You won't remain here

 But ist seems a state retainer

 Claims another 10 years of your life."

 

 He stepped out in the Texas sunlight

 The cops all stood around

 Old Kilowatt ran 50 yards then threw himself down on the ground

 

 They might as well just have laid the old man down

 And we're gonna raze, raze the prisons to the ground

 Help us raze, raze the prisons tho the ground