Mamas Don't Let Your Babies
Grow Up To Be Poets
Don't let them do rhyme or
talk in prose
Make'em be electricians
Or drive for Dominoes.

Poets ain't easy to love and their lives are abstract
Spend half their time thinking, the other half trying to get it back
Poets are very hard to know
They seldom make sense while mending a fence
Or lose it somewhere on the road.

Poets like smoky old basements and reading aloud
They live for the moment and the applause from the crowd
Old ragged books with pages torn away
They either talk too much or have nothing to say
If you don't try to corral him, or over-morale him
He'll probably just ride slip away.

Mamas Don't Let Your Babies
Grow Up To Be Poets
Don't let'em be like us
We carouse, we chew and sometimes we cuss
So, Mamas keep your Babies far, far away
And the poet inside won't go astray.