Love or Money

Joni Mitchell

The firmament of Tinsel Town
Is strung with tungsten stars
Lot's of forty watt successes
He says, "Where's my own shining hour?"

He's the well kept secret of the underground
He's in debt to the company store
Because his only channeled aspiration
Was getting back that girl he had before

He's got stacks and stacks of words that rhyme
Describing what it is to lose
He's got some just for laughs, he's got some for love
That mainline to his blues

Some to shed a little light
On you and on me
Some to shed a little light
On a human story

The wars of pride and property
The rebel Irish and the promised land Jew
Fighting behind his eyes and over seas
Wounded in action and no ceasefire in view

Brave reporters bring the battles home
But tonight inside that box
Just more bang-bang ketchup color to him
Just more Twentieth Century Fox

All because that ghostly girl comes haunting
Just out of reach outside his bed
She kicks the covers off of his sleep
For the clumsy things he said

She commands his head
She tries his sanity
She demands his head
Tonight unknowingly

Vaguely she floats and lacelike
Blown in like a curtain on the night wind
She's nebulous and naked
He wonders where she's been

He grabs at the air because there's nothing there
Her evasiveness stings him now
With long legs, long lonely legs
Bruised from banging into things

One day he was standing just outside her door
He was carrying an armload of bright balloons
She just laughed
She said she heard him knocking
And she teased him for the moon

Is one the moon, dear clown
Tied to a string for me?
He tried but he could not get it down
For truth or mystery
He tried but he could not get it down
For love or money