Elvis Costello - Fake Tin Star lyrics

[Verse] Things these days are better by far A horse can out run a motor car If the wheels are rubber and the rails are steel That beast can outrun any automobile Here's the story of progress and all the bullets they spent On a sheet hung up in a circus tent There's a lantern shining - it's pointing the way This kind man has probably had his day But they keep him around with his last vain hope For selling tickets while spinning a rope They brought him down off the vanishing trail But nobody these days wants to hear his tale So he spends his nights leaning up at the bar The real gone cowboy with the fake tin star Up on the screen there's a boy half his age They pay him 20 times his weekly wage For dodging phony bullets and catching blunt blades For blowing up horses and kissing young maids Children cheer Women throw flowers Men just glower Up at the screen But they don't know Just what it means Vengeance and dreams Girls just swoon at the mention of him With his face all powdered and his immaculate brim And his hair pomaded and his fingernails clean While old men whisper "Just look at him preen" And outside muttering through a cheap cigar There's a real gone cowboy with a fake tin star