Mark Springer Poet Lyric

Just one banana

My father told me, "Dana:
In the kitchen is a banana
It's meant for your mother
Not for you, nor any other.

But I was a kid of ruthless ways
A throwback to hunter gatherer days
To those harsh days on the Savannah
When finding a banana was nirvana.

I snuck into the kitchen, I'm sorry to say
I munched the banana, my ethics gave way.
In hindsight there wasn't much hope
I had started down a slippery slope.

Years later I ran an outlaw clan
If you got in our way, you were a dead man
I'd sit there smoking a cheap Havana
Wearing a cowboy hat plus a bandana.

I got rich by taking other people's cash
Until one day an old man told me I was trash
I pulled out my gun, I was real mad
Then I froze; he was my dad.

"Son," he said, "you're plain no good
You took that banana, just because you could
It got worse from there, you slid down the slope
Hannah and I are at the end of our rope."

I thought he was right, I had strayed
So I made amends, a price I paid
Took my ill-gotten gains, gave to my mother Hannah
A lifetime's supply of Chiquita banana!

I went to a priest, confessed to all
Explained my repentance, told of my fall.
But the priest said I didn't understand
Too many past victims, across the land

For what profit it a woman named Hannah
If she gains every single banana
But loses her soul.
I had lost sight of the goal.
You stick to the right no matter how small
The only way to keep standing tall.

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