I'm walking through the ruins of the Cold War
Looking for a new pair of jeans
I cut a crooked path from Walmart to Target
As an approaching siren keens

The ash is scattering like snow-globe glitter
Summer fire season's already here
There's the howl and bellow of the engine horns
And then the flames suddenly appear

Watching it burn
Watching the inside turn
From the smoke and the flame
What's rebirthed will never return quite the same
And it's such a beautiful, beautiful shame

This Staples here is where they used to build
The SR71 Blackbird
It could easily do Mach 3.2
And fly so high that it couldn't be heard

I mention this to the cashier as she
Directs me to Aisle 7C
She looks at me for the first and the only time
And says, "Sounds like your bird was pretty."

Watching it burn
Watching the embers churn
What will be erased
Won't be reconjured and won't be replaced
And it's such a terrible, terrible waste

The smoke-filled sky is all the colors of violence
Murder-red, bruise-plum and drown-blue
The radio is playing an old-timey tune
That first came out in 1992

They're all out of the printer ink I need
And now I'm running as if for my life
The helicopters are circling overhead and
I just want to get home to my kids and my wife

Before it all burns
Before the inside turns
Before it disappears
Like a melody that floats past your ears
One you haven't heard in so many years

My grandmother's uncle was a Berlin doctor
On the wrong side of a genocide
After dinner he pulled his wife close
And they both ate cake laced with cyanide

I'm putting every scrap, every photograph,
Every memento I've got into this box
I take a match to it and I watch it burn
And smile just as big as Goldilocks

Watching it burn
Watching the inside turn
From the smoke and the flame
What's reborn will never come back quite the same
And it's such a beautiful, beautiful shame