best "rock" (or whatever) couplet ever

so many amazing lines in that song. I think my favorite couplet is the last one:

It's Christmas in prison, there'll be music tonight.
I'll prob'ly get homesick. I love you. Goodnight.

yeah beautiful. he can deploy a word rhyming with itself like no other (not being sarcastic).

i also deeply love the image of

The search light in the big yard swings round with the gun
And spotlights the snowflakes like the dust in the sun

and the chess game... they're all great

The searchlight might be my favorite image in any song. just so instantly evocative and so beautiful.

And if you survive 'til 2005, i hope you're exceedingly thin
For if you are stout you will have to breathe out while the people around you breathe in

Many things on my mind
Words in the way

and that ain't no joke
you can disappear in smoke

it's like we're at a Ponzi scam-inar:
-there's no escaping without a door prize
-they're operating at significant loss

Oh, I never should have said the books that you read
Were all I loved you for

I can dance like Sherlock Holmes
I can sing like Sherlock Holmes
But I can't be Sherlock Holmes

he took a ride on the new highway
a culvert down to the ducks and drakes

In the fragrance sweet of the evening air
I could leave this world quite without a care

he'll wrap you up in his arms, tell you that you've been a good boy
he'll rekindle all the dreams it took you a lifetime to destroy

If I had a nickel, if I had a dime
I'd put it in the toilet and I'd shit all the time

I’ve been around the world and I didn’t pay my dues
Yeah we knocked ‘em dead in Dallas (they didn’t know we were Jews)

And when you finish doing that
Bring in the dog and put out the cat

in the hanging garden change the past
in a hanging garden wearing furs and masks

telling this hasn't been mentioned

i'm stronger than you think

Oh, my peer, your veneer
Is wearing thin and cracking
The surface informs underneath
Underneath is lacking

i'm talking here to me alone

your finest hour

take your instinct by the reins

better best, rearrange

what we want, and what we need

has been confused, been confused