Going up - going down -
Takin' the same old load
Over the same old road,
Between the ground and the sky and the ground.
I'm a real high-flyin' eagle they forgot to give a wing
I'm the skipper of a shoebox on a string.
Watch your step - face the door.
Makin’ the same old cruise
Up to the land of shoes,
Down to pots -- up to shoes once again.
I’m a dipsy-doodle dancing
In a lowland, highland fling.
I’m the skipper of a shoebox on a string.
Oh-oh-oh --
It wouldn’t be so bad
If sometimes the floors got changed around --
If what one day you had to go up to,
The next day you had to come down.
But the second floor follows the first floor,
And the fourth always follows the third.
And you know if on one floor, you give them the flowers,
On the next, you must give them the bird.
Interlude:
Some day I'll skip a floor, and I'll be canned.
Already I can hear their reprimand:
"We never expected our chariot
To be run by a Judas Iscariot!
Take your hand from those motors -
You know where your coat is -
Never darken our Otis again!
Resume Chorus:
Rising now – falling then.
Travelin’ mile by mile,
Knowin’ that all the while,
I’m exactly where I was before.
I go up and down like Wall Street –
On a ticker tape, I swing.
In my floating two-by-two box –
My “going up the flur” box –
I’m the skipper of a shoebox on a string. (Going down!)
