Dan Bern - Art on the Run

Take the best idea you got,
sprouting from your brain like cauliflower
Stick it in the microwave
leave it for a quarter of an hour

Write poems on the freeway
Write screenplays in between submitting faxes
Draw pictures at the Wendy's drive through window
on your way to do your taxes

Because you're not a child, you're not a child
Days flash by, like numbers on a TV dial

Forget that novel, man, could be
Haiku is more your style

Making art on the run art on the run
Ar-ar-art on the run
Art on the run, ar-ar-art on the run

Chopin in his Chevrolet and digital machine
Singing melodies while pumping gasoline
Picture Michelangelo with a briefcase and a beeper
When's the last time that you had a really good night's sleep?

Stick your canvas by your car phone,
Maybe paint a sailboat after lunch
I hear you wrote a sonnet,
One line every two days for a month

Finish up that story,
you can get another napkin from the waiter

Put some clay inside your glove compartment
Maybe you can sculpt a little later

Shakespeare in the airport lobby drinking wine
Calculating how to pay his rent on time
Pack a lunch of liverwurst and half a dozen rhymes

Making Art on the run, art on the run
art on the run, ar-ar-art on the run
art on the run, ar-ar-art on the run

Mozart with his Casio and walkman and his pen
Tries to write an opera before the phone can ring again
Van Gogh painting greeting cards for a little extra cash
I’ll finish that thought later, now I really have to dash

Making art on the run
Art on the run, ar-ar-art on the run
Making art on the run
Art on the run, ar-ar-art on the run
Art on the run, ar-ar-art on the run
Art on the run, ar-ar-art on the run