Scrolls
2018, Gibson Chase-Pinkney

(Refrain)
Burn not our books, leave the scrolls in their racks
Even knowing their contents obscene
I yearn that you look and control your attacks
Making ashes and dust of a dead person's dreams

(Form I)
So listen please people, to the words that I sing
before you return to your homes for the evening
And please just desires, to keep happy and fed
But leave prophets or liars so they still can be read
And please douse the fires, let's go home to our beds
And let's focus on more pressing evils instead

(Form II)
When you burn up the words of an author who's dead 
Pages pressed in a different time 
You deprive those yet born of the chance to have read 
Different thoughts from a different mind
If those words posed a challenge to the Violent and strong 
then they lose any chance to ignite 
Better deeds amongst those who might try to right wrongs 
Or better lives for the wrong who might try to do right 

(Form III)
If ... our ... 
young can't aspire to stay sheltered and fed                  
With the skills of a civilized mind
Then our young may conspire, slay and plunder instead
Leaving learning and reason behind
We've learned ways to live with such freedom and ease         
holding disease and starvation at bay
but our ways must rely on such records as these
And so our lives will get harder as we burn them away

so

(Refrain)
Burn not our books, leave the scrolls in their racks
Even knowing their contents obscene
I yearn that you look and control your attacks
Heaving glowing coals on peoples' hard work and dreams

(Form I)
So listen now please, precious moments I ask
before you return to your mandated task
And please douse the fires, and go home instead
We'll take down the pyres, to save what can still be read
And please just desires, to keep happy and fed
And we'll clean up the mess in the morning

(Form II)
It may seem that recordings of partisan hacks
can preserve no great fuel for our minds
But their arguments will live so much longer, in fact
reocurring to hacks throughout time
If you know that some parts of our lives do not change
Despite the law of the land or the year
It might help you decide when you try to arrange
To act with a purpose, not react in fear

So please

(Refrain)
Burn not our books, leave the scrolls in their racks
Even knowing their contents obscene
I yearn that you look and control your attacks
Heaving glowing coals on paper printed with dreams

(Form I)
So listen fair people, to you I must plead
Ignore primal fears, and think of our needs
We can put out these fires, start talking instead
Sort the prophets from liars, well at least in our heads
And then we'll retire, and discuss while we're fed
Using coals to cook beans and not books

(Form II)
If what you hate are the words that are scratched by the reed
Then you still have an option of peace
Don't censor or burn one lone madman's screed
Or his legend and fame will increase
If instead you can answer his scrawlings in turn
and produce a more reasoned retort
Then people will listen, and your ideas will have earned
A place in the schools and the courts

(Form III)

Ideas are born well before the men they impel
to destroy or refine what they see
With me poor or well, abhor the men who compel
You to be as they want you to be
In your readings you may learn of people who claimed
to hold ethics and virtues most just
but they then needed neither to rob and to maim
they said that to be just, we must do what we must

(Refrain)
Burn not our books, leave the scrolls in their racks
Even knowing their contents obscene
I yearn that you look, and control your attacks
Making ashes and dust of a dead poet's dreams

(Form I)
So please drop your torch, and lend me your ear
I'm armed but with words, you have nothing to fear
And try to inspire better thinking instead
Building better desires from the words you have read
And when you retire, and lay in your deathbed
You'll have no regrets, in the end
    

Questions about this song? Email me at gibson@gibson.show