Page by page of black and white cartoons I kept 'em by my bed in a cardboard box I read 'em one by one on summer afternoons Lonely upstairs with all the ticking clocks And you were elsewhere like you always were Until you tumbled in to make a scene And then you came in, raised your gavel up Ladies and gentlemen, let the court convene All these years, I been keeping it light Tryin' to make it all right, put up a good fight But now I'm thinking that I knew all along About it And how that farewell that I wanted to come Was never gonna come. How could I have been so dumb? When I tried to find you, you were already gone Brick by brick, I found my own way to be To fashion something like a landing strip I always said you helped me get to my feet I never noticed how you tried to trip me Instead you tripped, yourself, and like a rolling wave You had to crash into the waiting shore And you just lay there, Battered by the sea Completely spent and then you paid some more I saw you as a hero and a hero gets enshrined in a place on high So when I picked you up at destination Zero, I should have told that hero goodbye I could never bring myself to that, but maybe now the time has come