on the rooftop

we will never be what we want to be.

i'm sitting on the rooftop outside my window,
just sitting, watching the cars go by, talking to myself,
and led zeppelin's playing on the radio inside,
and i can hear it kind of fuzzy
because radios never were as good as records
because i could never afford a seven-inch
and you always want what you can't have,
but if that's how life worked
then i guess we'd all just sit on rooftops and think of the past
and pick at our frayed shoestrings
and swing our feet over the edge of the house
because it feels good to swing, just like
we haven't always thought of ourselves as gods
because what we have defines us in a dictionary of sorts,
and if we don't have anything then we can't be anybody
and led zeppelin gives way to u2
and my feet stop swinging.