Two Cokes for Paul Nelson

These are the elements of a verse
Sherman cigarettes - but it gets worse
Footprints on the running board of his wall
And by the way his name was Paul
And let's not talk of his fall just yet

Oh starved to death that's what the tabloids say
But you know - I don't see it that way
In fact for me - the opposite is true
Paul was a glutton for everything he loved and knew
From Orson Welles, Ross Macdonald, Howard Hawks, Raymond C, Chet B, PKD, and
Warren Z oh The New York Dolls and me

So let's take a seat at the Jackson Hole
Let's raise two cokes and toast his soul
The soul of a man - our friend
Paul Nelson Paul Nelson

A magnum forty-five and a snub-nose thirty-eight
But books can kill if you can't get them straight
A paragraph, a sentence, to a starving mind
Some die for want of an opening line
Life on a shrinking editorial island
Paul couldn't lie, he couldn't lie

Hey Rod Stewart - bashed out on a lark
Typing as fast as Lester Bangs could bark
Paul the quiet man, living in a borrowed head
An enabler who couldn't get out of bed
Marathon man in a hamburger booth
He told the truth, he told the truth - that's Paul

Let's take a seat at the Jackson Hole
Let's raise two cokes to toast his soul
The soul of a man - our friend
Paul Nelson Paul Nelson

Abiding mentor, with a guiding mind
Freeze-frame, isolate the details, and then rewind
A stickler for the director's cut
His own mis-en-scene, he fell into a rut
Scraps on the cutting-room floor
Shut the door, shut the door, shut the door

Now somehow he lost his way and that's a pity
But in the words of Norma Desmond
The movies got small not Paul not Paul not Paul not Paul

A drink at the Jackson Hole
Two cokes oh let's toast his soul
The soul of a man
Our dear friend
Paul Nelson Paul Nelson

The older you get, the more you live with ghosts
And that's according to Nick Tosches
who's now among them
And Paul