Never Go Where You're Not Invited

Once I heard an old poet talking about his mother-in-law. When she was asked what she thought about suicide she said "I think a person shouldn't go where they're not invited." I thought about this, and wrote this song about it.
These are the lyrics:
LYRICS
Never Go Where You’re Not Invited

Popeye died beyond the sight of shore
What more could a sailor have wished for?
Travellers want to die where train whistles hoot
Pecos Bill died too, still wearin’ his boots
People love what they love—they can’t fight it
It’s best to never go where you’re not invited

We unfold and rise and die, again again
Yesterday’s identity has fled, fled
So why would you be in a hurry, kid,
To leave behind this one before its dead?
To flee from your own darkness is be
nighted
Why rush to go there where you’re not invited

I’ve learned to give thanks as I’ve grown older
Thanks to kind people who loaned me a shoulder
People gonna give you what they please
If they don’t it won’t help to try and squeeze
If they say “not welcome” don’t feel slighted
And honey never go where you ain’t been invited

Some guys and gals took off just yesterday
Has time ever passed too slow to meditate?
And another one this moment ends it all
Will pain end just when you decide to fall?
You wanna stop your own self, you decided
But wisdom says “Why go—you ain’t invited”

Once you’ve chosen that path to say goodbye
You can’t get back to where work must be done
You’re acting like a future-deprived child
To spite yourself, hiding from the sun
You’re crashing all the lamps you coulda lighted
You’re going where you were not invited

Some men die atop of anointed writs of duty
But all souls go away on the appointed day
Some die on the sweet-pointed tits of beauty
That day is something no one can wish away
My muse is a gentle muse, I call her Vita
She says kiss me, don’t go where you’re not invited

She said “Take this down” but I barely could write it
She said “Never go, no, where you’re not invited.”

Thank you to:

Statue of Father Time, from a cemetery in Genoa, Italy.

Thank you to Blue Hole Records, especially Tristan True Giallani,
For use of “Mud Water, Country Bounce” Instrumental Melody.

Thank you to Grandmother Butcher, for your inspiration.

When I was 18 I moved to Chicago, and there on the buses and
on the Old Town streets and down on State Street too, sometimes I saw the elderly entertainer known as Casey Jones and his pet chicken. The brief footage of him with accordian was taken on Maxwell Street, Chicago, Ill.

View of passing train is footage taken in Leverett, Massachusetts.
Painting of Crying Child by my brother, the artist Thomas C. Jackson.

Photos, Collages and Found Objects, & Painting of Sun Goddess Amaterasu,
&Photo of Buddhist sculpture from a garden in San Jose, by William J. Jackson.

Song lyrics composed and sung by Zimson Smift