Of men whose hearts or cars have crashed

Within the cityscape

To stay, they must be burned to ash

And kept within a vase

They must move miles out of town

If they’re to keep their head

The living move and settle down

Without room for the dead

The city can’t have space for tombs

They need to scrape the sky

And build another office room

That’s tens of stories high

Of those who fall, or burn, or drown

The mayor just shrugged and said,

“The living move and settle down

Without room for the dead”

Whatever dead cadavers seen

Spur stories that are told

Of ghosts and poltergeists, so keen

To reach into your soul

Because dead men are seldom found

They must be ghouls instead

The living move and settle down

Without room for the dead

The cemetery’s quite a drive

With nothing on the way

Except the gas pumps that survive

Off grieving men, their prey

More urns appear in homes downtown

Than Giza’s pyramid

The living move and settle down

Without room for the dead

And after every stop’s long gone

Comes our suburban sect

Where graveyards show up on our lawns

And old abodes are wrecked

We need these headstones all around

If we’re to win our bread

The living move and settle down

And give us all their dead