well i’ve never worked much
in fact i’ve been poor all my life
i guess i really own is
ten kids and a wife
this house is a lived in mine
but it’s really a shack
but i always managed somehow
to drive me a brand new cadillac
backdoor steps
they done fell plum down
front screen door’s off and laying
somewhere out there on the ground
wind just now whupped another piece
of that old tar roofing off the back
sure hope it don’t skin up that new cadillac
front porch
they’re loose at the bottom
it don’t make no sense to fix them
cause that floor just too darn rotten
wintertime we sometimes have some snow
that blows in through the cracks
it gets too bad we just all pile up
sleep out there in that new cadillac
i know the place ain’t much
but i sure don’t pay no rent
i get the check the first of every month
from this here federal government
every wednesday i get commodities
sometimes four or five sacks
pick em up down at the welfare office
driving that new cadillac
some folks say i’m crazy
and i’d even been called a fool
but my kids get free books and
all them there free lunches at school
we get peanut butter and cheese
and man they give us flour by the sack
course them welfare checks
they make the payments on this new cadillac
the way that i see it
these other folks are the fools
they’re working and paying taxes
just to send my youngins through school
salvation army cuts our hair
and gives us the clothes we wear on our back
so we can dress up and ride around
and show off this new cadillac
but things still gonna get better yet
at least that’s what i understand
they tell me this new president
put in a whole new poverty plan
why he gonna send us poor folks money
they say we gonna get it out here in stacks
in fact my wife’s already shopping around
for her new cadillac
Artist: Guy Drake
Year: 1970
Decade: 70s
Language: en
Word Count: 193