Marc Douglas Berardo - Lightning Lyrics
1966 the world was just waking up and coming toIn San Francisco the Beatles played candlestick and everything was feeling brand newThe Beat Poets had all but left North BeachAnd the scene had moved to the parkIn the middle of all that my man lightning lit up the darkHe was born Charlie McCristy in an east coast suburban townHe was a country club kid with a silver spoon playing on fresh cut groundAll the teachers called him brilliantAll the girls they loved his faceBut he didn't feel the love inside so first chance he got he lit up out of that placeLike Lightning, flashing off and onThen he was goneHe took a scholarship to San Francisco StateAnd had all the promise in the worldBut soon he discover Carousel ballroom shows, pills and free love girlsIt didn't take long to change him and he stopped going to classA few hits of Owsley will do that to youA few hits of Owsley will put you on your assYeah his hippie friends called him lightningThat suited him just fineHis mind was always moving fast and working moving overtimeHe had ideas for space phone and personal arithmetic machinesBut the drugs kept the genius bottled up and they remained just dreamsHe could not bottle lightning, flashingOff and I, then it was goneBR They were throwing around the I-ChingThey were dancing round the fireIt would be hard to find a place on earth that was getting any higherLSD, Mescalito Lightning passed that acid testBut there were times when he couldn't feel the love inside and it left him disillusioned and depressedThe sixties turned into the 70's and Lightning drifted further westTo a beach shack in Lahaina but by then he was just a messThe dope was replaced by hard liquor and an anger insideThe free love dream was over to him the free love dream was a lieHe drowned one night in Kauai drunk on stolen cheapo champagneHis Hawaiian friends at his funeral didn't even know his real nameJust a thumb nail sketch of Lightning he came and then he wentOne second you are here and then you disappear your soul lost in the firmamentLike Lightning, flashing, off and onAnd then it is gone.
