Mormon's are everwhere
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battalions of bicycling bachelors
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with dark suits
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and well cropped hair
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we're Mormons too
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have been since '72
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I'm riding between my brother and sister
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in the back seat of a '67 Buick station wagon
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with red vinyl seats
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we stick by each other
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and to those seats
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we've been eating cheese and bacon sandwiches
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our mother made for thirteen days straight in the August heat
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and both my siblings are wakin' on those eggshells
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as I will soon learn how to do myself
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they play their quiet silly games
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with their peashooters
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as I sip luke-warm Sprite from a tin can
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sold to me by a hunchback silly bastard old woman
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a hundred miles back
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who is probably the only person with good sense
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in this part of the country
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I still don't know what to do god-awful bacon and cheese sandwich
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but your body is your temple
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God tells us so,
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so drink up your milk
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and reap what you sow
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I mold the cheese and bacon sandwich into a ball in my hand
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it kind of reminds me of Play-dough
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I look around to see who is watchin'
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and stuff it between the red vinyl seats
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no one will find it
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at least not for a couple of weeks
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we're in this big place now
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it's kind of like 1/2 of an blue plastic easter egg shell
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and there's a hole in the top
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where the sun cuts through
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and lights up the room
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and I hear all these male voices
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telling me that black people are inferior
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and it's ok to have more than one wife
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and as the dry dry breath of the utah sun warms me
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I stand before a statue of Jesus that is far too big
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and has held these folks hostage for so so long
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and I gaze up at the nostrils of the sandstone savior
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and wonder if it
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can smell all this bullshit
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cause I sure can
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and I'm only 5 years old
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in Salt Lake City
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in 1973...
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-----------------
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Salt Lake City 1973
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Shawn Mullins |