That Friday night in April
Booth put a bullet in a brain
One shot from a Derringer
From five inches away
A face that was familiar
A role that he chose to play
He jumped to the stage and broke a leg but managed to escape
He managed to say his line
I’m sure he’d rehearsed it many times
“Sic Semper Tyrannis”
The words lingered in the air
Booth fled from the city before the news was everywhere
Finally more famous than his brother,
More famous than his dad,
The only reason the family name is gonna last: Booth
He made it to Virginia without raising an alarm
Spent his last night in a barn writing in a notebook
To better explain what he had done
Now that judgment day had come
The army tracked him to a farmhouse
And he had nowhere to run
When they had the place surrounded Corbett fired off his gun
Booth didn’t become a martyr
There are no statues of the man
On the front porch of some poor farmer he died looking at his hands
“useless, useless…”
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