They came in silver spaceships and called us friends,
But farmer Sam out on the edge of town
Was racist, and just about shot ‘em down.
We gave ‘em cigarettes to make amends,
Some were insulted, but most just laughed,
And said, “no wonder your hospitals are understaffed.
You keep your poison, we got work to do.”
And they built an alien house or two.

They’d studied our world’s history,
And they knew the sorts of things that we’d
Been doing all these centuries.
And they fit in well.

They took some breaks and gave us saucer rides,
We showed ‘em how to rope a steer, and took ‘em out for chips and beer.
That afternoon the President arrived.
And they said, “hi, so you’re their leader.
Where’s your wife? We’d like to meet ‘er.”
And the army came all around the site,
And kept a close watch day and night.

More and more were coming, it seemed, every day,
And building alien bungalows, and planting alien crops in rows,
Until the time came when we heard them say,
“sorry folks, there’s no more space,
you’ll have to move on to another place.”
“You told us we were friends” we said.
“Sure,” they replied, “all our enemies are dead.”

They’d studied our world’s history,
And they knew the sorts of things that we’d
Been doing all these centuries.
And they fit in well.

-Marco Klaue

 

(I’m not sure if this one is light or heavy. What can I say? The West is won yet again. We are aware that this isn’t authentic bluegrass, but it was lots of fun with me trying to play banjo, Dan producing hillbilly backing vocals, and Dr. Dyck surprising us with his fiddling technique -- he was concertmaster of the Vancouver Opera Orchestra at the time.)

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