The Pensacola Queen

from Prayer Street Blues by Jeremy Joyce

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lyrics

She got lost in the big top
couldn't find her way back home
Just wandering round that dirt lot
Till she was standing all alone

She wasn't much for hearing
From a firecracker accident
Not a call she heard or a loving word
So the searchers came and went

She could feel her body moving
when she awoke the next morn’
A gypsy family took her in
And just felt that she belonged

Nobody there spoke English
So there wasn't too much to say
She watched the power lines just a fall and rise
Three hundred miles away

Seventeen years old
Hair down to her knees
She could ride bare back, she would walk the wire
She could fly from them trapeze

She could sell you about a hundred dollars
Of things that you don't need
She could throw a knife within an inch of your life
Make you check if you bleed

Many men tried to bed her
All of them had failed
One day a mime put it to his mind
That he might prevail

She cut off a piece of his finger
Threw it in the lion's cage
And at the scene they all agreed
A queen was born that day

The image on the poster
A scepter in her hand
A leopard coyly by her feet
Leashed by a golden strand

To many town she traveled
Performing defying feats
Men professed their love
But none were worth the queen

Until somewhere outside Wichita
Under a pile of matted hair
Was a roving street performer
Who was both strong and fair

Some love is born of words
Some love is born of lust
Some love is like a flower
And one day turns to dust

This love was born in Kansas
By the side of a country road
When she opened the door of her diesel truck
To let that young boy roll.

for many years they loved
but never were they wed
like a dog who begged for meat
But she only gave him bread

Never on her finger
Would she wear his pawnshop ring
Never take a husband
Never have a king

So dreaming in the arms
Of a Dark Eyed Dancing Girl
His Boyish broken heart
Had a plan unfurl

Where she kept the cash
When she took her rest
How deep to plunge the dagger
Into her royal breast

Standing in the Moonlight
The August air hung still
The unsheathing of the blade
The final breath before the kill

But hotter than a Summer kiss
The Leopard’s teeth cut hard
Colder than the Queen’s grey eye
His blade he fell upon

Blood pooled on the trailer floor
Through the window stars fade
A Spanish girl stood at the door
With the Queen who laid in wait

Her leopard at her feet
Her maiden softly crying
The love born at the side
Of the country road is dying

credits

from Prayer Street Blues, released December 31, 2015

license

about

Jeremy Joyce New Orleans, Louisiana

New Orleans couldn’t offer a more appropriate musical backdrop for Jeremy Joyce, whose genre-defying songs are born out of Jeremy’s macro-level interest in music history and his micro-level interest in what makes songs tick.