Bright Eyes

The people's key
Ringing through arena seats
The black machine
Played it all from memory
A fever dream
Well, I'll come back eventually
To wade into the water
Another and another
We go
Form some kind of code
The bodies float
And form some kind of code
The bodies float
Someone's out to know
Papa hobo
Don't hide your eyes
Mother mountain
Don't kill your unborn child
His day is coming
His day is coming
A question burns
Beneath the centuries of dirt
That voice you've heard
Well, every head's a different world
Well, mine's concerned
I boarded up the windows
A catatonic plateau
A backwards black-faced minstrel show
So just let me go
The prisoner moans
Oh, just let me go
The prisoner moans
No one has to know
Eva Braun went to dye her hair
Little Hitler sighs in his giant's chair
And dreamed of nowhere
And dreamed of nowhere
And dreamed
The people's key
Ringing filling everything
The theme repeats
Thinner than the galaxy
Impart to me
Your wisdom and eventually
I'll float into the ether
Another from another
We grow
Form some kind of code
A flesh at bone
We form some kind of code
A flesh at bone
No, you're not alone
History bows and it steps aside
In the jungle there's columns of purple light
We're starting over
We're starting over
We're starting
We're starting

Used to dream of time machines
Now it's been said we're post-everything
As a child, imagining
Neckties and coastlines
I've seen the show, man, what a sight
Drenched us in approximated sunlight
The crowd was small and mostly blind, but kind
You're too kind
Now you are how you were when you were real
Now you are how you were when you were real
There you go again, on that circular trip
Lick the solar plexus of some L.A. shaman
I'm out of breath, I better sit
Been living hard, living
All I do is follow, just follow this hollow you around
I wouldn't waste another thought
On what is fair and what is not
The Quinceañera dress she bought
Was unstitched with bullets
All the guests in the garden screamed
Women and tires squealing
Such opulence, such misery
Unwinding, unwinding
All I do is follow, just follow, just follow this hollow you around
Now you are how you were when you were real

Hold on tight Beginner’s Mind
The wheel is spinning too
Fast to make your move
The worst must be assumed
Oh how they will try
To pull and to pry
Away what you know now
Beat and beat it out
Leave a drum that makes no sound

A snuff film on a JumboTron for all the world to see

A cocktail napkin epitaph
A psychobabble telegram
Message written in the sand
The tide rolls in

Swear you’ll do the opposite
Of all those tangled hypocrites
Who say that the experiment has failed
Don’t go there
You’re getting nowhere
You’re getting nowhere

Stay awhile my Inner Child
I’d like to learn your trick
To know what makes you tick
To nurse you when you’re sick
Oh how you’ve grown so cynical
Hard lines carved in your face
The sunshine is so cliche
Just like love and pain

You tried your best on the Rorschach test
but there is just nothing to see

Heard terabytes of perfect pitch
Some universal elegance
Stack the seventh and the fifth
Along the grid

Swear you’ll be the opposite
Of all those stilted hypocrites
You know what made you infamous to them, don’t you?
You keep starting over
You keep starting over
You keep starting over
You keep starting over

Hold on tight Beginner’s Mind
The current is far too strong
It will carry you along
Till you’re just like everyone
Stay awhile my Inner Child
I’d like to learn your trick
To know what makes you tick
To nurse you when you’re sick

I do my best to sleep through the caterwaul
The classicists, the posturing avant-garde
I bought a gray macaw named him Jules Verne
He’ll probably outlive me he’s a bright bird
Keeps me company I teach him new words

I saw a hologram at the theme park
She looked as real as me through the white fog
Then she melted down to her ankles
Turned into a million-watt candle
If I knew where she went I would follow

Walking through the land of tomorrow
Martian trinkets, plastic Apollos
In the sunshine try to act normal
My veins are full of flat cherry-cola
Slept on a bench by the roller-coaster

Dreamt I was riding on a motorbike
Lion of Judah painted on the side

I’m doing fine, I’m back in the Palisades
Life’s a wash, a pastoral school play
China shops and cold ivory towers
I and I make toasts to the Caesars
Forcing down the dregs of Decembers

Madeline she spins in a slow bang
All through the house the strong smell of burnt sage
Let’s make it clean and run out the spirits
I know a diving bell when I hear it
We’re going down now under the surface

Light to dark can shift in an instant
Feeling close but keeping my distance
On all fours she’s just so insistent
Fills my mind with jump ropes and slit wrists
Bust through the Firewall into heaven

Then I’m standing in that blinding light
Crooked crosses falling from the sky

Seen yeah seen by I and I

Pilgrim across the water
We are the same brother
Hitchhiking back to Zion
Hold in our tears as we flip the album
What if this leads to ruin?
You got a soul, use it
All this despair forgiven
Rolling away on a Wheel of Sevens
She sings like the Queen of Sheba
Voice through a blown speaker
One drop and bubbling Leslie
Calling me home like Haile Selassie

Pilgrim beside the fire
It's been a long winter
We got a lot in common
Cover our heads as they split the atom
All of our days are numbered
I've taken some comfort
In knowing the wave has crested
Knowing I don't have to be an exception
Children they fill the bleachers
One is the next Caesar
Keep all their minds collected
Until he comes, until he comes

Hide the Omega Day in plain sight
Too good to be true

I've seen stranger things
I've seen that tree of smoke
I've seen stranger things happen before

Pilgrim up on the mountain
Barefoot and still climbing
Filling the Book of Hours
Day after day in the filth and squalor
We are the chosen people
Safe from the next evil
One Love, magnetic memory
Reel after reel spinning within me

I had the wildest dream last night
I was swimming with you
In that cenote the heavens made with black fire
Just woke up too soon

I've seen stranger things
I've seen those daytime ghosts
I've seen stranger things happen before

I've seen stranger things
I've seen that tree of smoke
I've seen stranger things happen before

Every new day is a gift; it's a song of redemption
Any expression of love is a way to return
To that place that I think of so often but now never mention
The one the voice in the back of my head says that I don't deserve

Come fire, come water, come karma, we're all in transition
The Wheel of Becoming erases the physical mind
Till all that remains is a staircase of misinformation
And the code we inherit, the basis, the essence of life

So I go umbrella under my arm into the green of the radar
How did it get so dark in the day?
It's just so bizarre, is it true what we're made of?
Why do I hide from the rain?

Inside some cloudy nostalgia where there are no features
We look at ourselves through a porthole, the passage of time
See that sunny day that we snuck down, hid under the bleachers
Kissed as the band marched, everything fell into line
So I go umbrella under my arm into the green of the radar
How did I get so lost? I'm amazed
It's just so bizarre all the things I'm afraid of
Why do I hide from the rain?

Sure I had my doubts
But I know it now
We are jejune stars

So it starts again
At our childhood's end
I'll die young at heart

So I go umbrella under my arm into the green of the radar
How did it get so dark in the day?
It's just so bizarre if it true what we're made of
Why do I hide from the rain?

No one knows where the ladder goes
You're gonna lose what you love the most
You're not alone in anything
You're not unique in dying

I feel estranged every now and then
Fall asleep reading science fiction
I want to fly in your silver ship
Let Jesus hang and Buddha sit

It's on now
The days are long now
The ups and the sundowns
And a twisting mind

If I got to go first
I'll do it on my terms
I'm tired of traitors
Always changing sides
They were friends of mine

Don't hang around once the promise breaks
Or you'll be there when the next one's made
Kiss the feet of a charlatan
Some imagined freedom

All the rest is predictable
You can say you're the first to know
Bought a mantra to concentrate
Car alarm or hissing snake

I know now
How its gonna turn out
You've got to calm down
Or I'll lose my place

Got to get to the center
Got to get to the concert
Run off with a dancer
Gonna celebrate

We'll welcome the New Age
Covered in warrior paint
Lights from the jungle to the sky
See now a star is born
Looks just like a blood orange
Don't it just make you want to cry?
Precious friend of mine

Will I know when it's finally done?
This whole life is a hallucination
You're not alone in anything
You're not alone in trying to be

One for the righteous
One for the ruling class
One for the tyrant
One for the slaughtered lamb
One for the struggle
One for the lasting peace
One for you and One for me

One for the Fuhrer
One for his child bride
One for the wedding
One for the suicide
One for the bunker
One for the broadcast booth
One for me, now One for you

How did we get so far away from us?
How did we get so far away?

One for the people
One for the parliament
One for the weary
One for the malcontent
One for the master
One for the protegee
One for you and One for me

One for the breadlines
One for the billionaires
One for the missing
One for the barely there
One for the certain
One for the real confused
One for me, okay, now One for you

Now that we’ve come so far away from us
Now that we’ve come too far to say
You and Me, You and Me
That is an awful lie
You and Me, You and Me
That is an awful lie
It’s I and I
It’s I and I
It’s I and I
It’s I and I

Took the fireworks and the vanity
The circuit board and the city streets
Shooting star, swaying palm tree
Laid them at the Arbiter’s feet

If I could change my mind, change the paradigm
Prepare myself for another life
Forgive myself for the many times
I was cruel to something helpless and weak

Here it comes that heavy love
I’m never gonna move it alone
Here it comes that heavy love
Tag it on a tenement wall
Here it comes that heavy love
Someone’s got to share in the load
Here it comes that heavy love
I’m never gonna move it alone

I was dressed in white, touched by something pure
Death-obsessed like a teenager
Sold my tortured youth, piss and vinegar
I’m still angry with no reason to be

At the Architect who imagined this
For the Everyman, blessed Sisyphus
Slipping steadily into madness
Now that’s the only place to be free

Here it comes that heavy love
You’re never gonna move it alone
Here it comes that heavy love
Tattooed on a criminal’s arm
Here it comes that heavy love
Someone’s got to share in the load
Here it comes that heavy love
You’re never gonna move it alone

No I don’t want to play
It’s a shell game
It’s a shell game

Distorted sounds on oscilloscopes
Distorted facts I could never cope
My private life is an inside joke
No one will explain it to me

We’ll be everything that we’ll ever need
Everyone on the count of three
Everyone on the count of three
All together now

Here it comes that heavy love
We’re never gonna move it alone
Here it comes that heavy love
Playing as the cylinder rolls
Here it comes that heavy love
I only want to share in the load
Here it comes that heavy love
I’m never gonna move it alone

I loved a triple spiral
My maiden mother crow
I folded my devotion to an origami rose
So out her ten feet window, she said to look below
Could I see the town was burning?
Could I see the broken prison?
Could I see that it was time for me to go?
They looted the museum, took all that they could hold
A motorcade of flatbed trucks
Made off with with quite a haul
And that's when I heard someone shout
""In with new, out with the old!""
A dusty box of letters
A rusty suit of armor
A casket made of 14 carat gold
That's the problem
Your sense of time
She changes like an hourglass
They're playing on the side
I loved you triple spiral
Father, son, and ghost
But you left me in my darkest hour
When I needed you, when I needed you
Now that the dream is over, I want it to be known
I never saw you coming
From my little human prism
How sad it is to know I'm in control
That's the problem, an empty sky
I fill it up with everything that's missing from my life
Where'd you come from, you faded sign?
Spinning through the centuries
Expanding all the time
Three worlds at once that blend together
Three times I cried for us
But I felt better then ...
I loved you triple spiral
My maiden mother crow
You found me in this fallowed state
My mind was off and stow
I heard your strange commotion
And wished I could go home
To live a little longer
A full indian summer
Long enough to carve you into stone

When the President talks to God
Are the conversations brief or long?
Does he ask to rape our women's rights
And send poor farm kids off to die?
Does God suggest an oil hike
When the President talks to God?

When the President talks to God
Are the consonants all hard or soft?
Is he resolute on down the line?
Is every issue black or white?
Does what God says ever change his mind
When the President talks to God?

When the President talks to God
Does he fake that drawl or merely nod?
Agree which convicts should be killed?
Where prisons should be built and filled?
Which voter fraud must be concealed
When the President talks to God?

When the President talks to God
I wonder which one plays the better cop?
"We should find some jobs, the ghetto's broke"
"No they're lazy, George, I say we don't
Just give 'em more liquor stores and dirty coke"
That's what God recommends

When the President talks to God
Do they drink near beer and go play golf
While they pick which countries to invade
Which Muslim souls still can be saved?
I guess God just calls a spade a spade
When the President talks to God

When the President talks to God
Does he ever think that maybe He's not
That that voice is just inside his head?
When he kneels next to the Presidential bed
Does he ever smell his own bullshit
When the President talks to God?

I doubt it

Big old house on the hill I sat on the windowsill Leaning out on the breeze Do I dwell in memories Or let them be? I can still hear you sing I see you in everything, in everything It's cold today Headed down the highway Please don't say you're still the same I'll love you if you've changed Big old car rolling down Through the dark and empty town See the sky everywhere Feel it in the open air It's still so clear It's cold today Headed down the highway Please don't say you're still the same I'll love you if you've changed I'll love you if you've changed

The language in the dimmer rooms
Seems to represent the light source well
How soft they speak and seem to be at peace
With the movement of the music and the madness
That is pulling me into this
And the shades of the lamps are woven red
The light, it stains and consecrates
Anointing all forgotten forms
That swirl and smoke and haunt this place
The girls in gowns all nurse the dark
Pulling it near to their swelling breasts
And watch as it seeps to their hearts
And beats within their virgin chests
And here I know seduction breeds
From wanton hearts that would seduce
And grows and spreads its vine and leaves
Embracing those who might have moved
But now remain to drink the night
From vials black and thick with steam
Such intoxicating delights
That leave you drunk inside this dream
And you watch them take the light from you
And you find yourself
On a velvet couch
Tasting the skin of a foreign girl
Her eyes are black
And wet like oil
And she ties your hands with a string of pearls
And you tremble like a frightened bird
As she closes in and captures you
To place you in the silver cage
Deep within her poisoned womb
And once you're safe inside
She might let you out to fly
In the circles around the room
But it's always night
And there is no moon
And you wonder if you are alive
And you're not sure if you want to be
But you drank her sweat like it was wine
And you lay with her on a bed of blue
And it's awful sweet
Like the fruit she cuts and feeds to you

You contrast and compare
Between the busy ones and the ones who don’t care
Until there is no one
That you really know
So I drift through these days
Of appointments and promises made
They will all end up broken
And quickly replaced
Weeks are slow, days drag on
Even practice and parties seem long
but I find myself going
I guess there's nothing to do, oh well
Group of kids, line of cars
more will show up after the bars close
There’s this boredom that drowns everything
Bottles break, music plays
conversations competing for space
I look for a corner or a quieter room
There’s no heat in this house
I can’t breathe with these words in my mouth
But I’m not going to say them
Yeah, I've made that mistake before
On the stairs, she grabs my arm
Says whats up, where you been, is something wrong?
I try to just smile
And say everything’s fine

I dreamt of a fever,
one that would cure me of this cold, winter-set heart
With heat to melt these frozen tears burned with reasons as to carry on

Into these twisted months I plunge without a light to follow
But I swear that I would follow anything
just get me out of here

But you get six months to adapt
and you get two more to leave town
And in the event that you do adapt
we still might not want you around

But I fell for the promise of a life with a purpose
but I know that that's impossible now
And so I drink to stay warm and to kill selected memories
cause I just can't think anymore about that
or about her tonight

And I give myself three days to feel better or else I
swear I'll drive right off a fucking cliff
because if I can't learn to make myself feel better
how can I expect anyone else to give a shit?

and I scream for the sunlight
or a car to take me anywhere.
just get me passed this dead and eternal snow

cause I swear that I'm dying
Slowly, but it's happening
and if the perfect spring is waiting somewhere
just take me there
just take me there
just take me there
and say and lie to me and say and lie to me and say
it's gonna be alright
it's gonna be alright
it's gonna be alright
it's gonna be alright
it's gonna be alright
it's gonna be alright
it's gonna be alright
it's gonna be alright
it's gonna be alright..

I spent a week drinking the sunlight of Winnetka, California
Where they understand the weight of human hearts
You see, sorrow gets too heavy and joy it tends to hold you
With the fear that it eventually departs
And the truth is I’ve been dreaming of some tired tranquil place
Where the weather won’t get trapped inside my bones
And if all the years of searching find one sympathetic face
Then it's there I'll plant these seeds and make my home
I spent a day dreaming of dying in Mesa, Arizona
Where all the green of life had turned to ash
And I felt I was on fire, with the things I could have told you
I just assumed that you eventually would ask
And I wouldn’t have to bring up my so badly broken heart
And all those months I just wanted to sleep
And though spring, it did come slowly, I guess it did its part
My heart has thawed and continues to beat
And I visited my brother on the outskirts of Olympia
Where the forest and the water become one
And we talked about our childhood
like a dream we were convinced of
That perfect, peaceful street that we came from
And I know he heard me strumming all those sad and simple chords
As I sat inside my room so long ago
And it hurts that he’s still shaking from those secrets that were told
By a car closed up too tight and a heart turned cold
And I went to San Diego, and the birthplace of the summer
And watched the ocean dance under the moon
There was a girl I knew there, one more potential lover
I guess that something’s gotta happen soon
Cause I know I can’t keep living in this dead or dying dream
As I walked along the beach and drank with her
I thought about my true love, the one I really need
With eyes that burn so bright, they make me pure
They make me pure, they make me pure
I long to be with you
They make me pure, they make me pure
I long to be with you

I had a brother once
He drowned in a bathtub
before he'd ever learned how to talk
And I don't know what his name was
but my mother does
I heard her say it once
Padraic my prince, I have all but died
From the sheer weight of my shame
You cried but no one came
And the water filled your tiny lungs
Appear, my dear, and cry for me
Six years ago today
That I laid you in your grave
Your sweet young skin was shining then too
So tonight to celebrate i will...
I will poison myself
Another coughing, shaking fit in a bathroom
That is spinning
And I close the door
And I rest my head on the tile floor
Sickness and sleep turning me cold
I'm still not sure
Is there some better place I could be heading towards?
Where the selfishly sick and self-absorbed...
Are welcome
I saw the future once
I was drunk in a phone booth
My eyes were wet and red
But I could not tell what was said
And through the screams of the traffic
Voices carried
Saying I'm sorry
On a day so gray it's black inside
Watching churches on TV
In a coma you don't dream
You just hope that someone sits with you
Babies turn blue when they're ignored
Like the sky on summer days
Before you turn and walk away
It has changed you
So tonight to compensate I will...
I will poison myself
Another coughing, shaking fit in a bathroom
That is spinning

Is the passion all gone?
Or is it still newly-wed?
If all this heat's doing
Is making us stick to the bed
Then there's no life to revive
But if the hunger's still there
Burried somewhere inside
Covered up by the boredom
We've been trying to hide
Then dig it up
And devour
And it'll seem more like a song
And less like it's math
When you pull on my hair
And bite me like that
It'll seem more like a song
And less like it's math
When you pull on my hair
And bite me like that
It'll seem more like a song
Yeah more like song
And the truth is that I can hardly wait
I don't care if we stay up too late
Don't answer the phone
Don't answer the phone
And it'll seems more like a song
And less like it's math
When you pull on my hair
and bite me like that
It'll seems more like a song
And less like it's math
When you pull on my hair
And bite me like that
And bite me like that
And bite me and scratch me like that
And the truth is that I can hardly wait
And It's so bad I can't concentrate
Don't answer the phone
Don't answer the phone
And it'll seem more like a song
And less like it's math
When you pull on my hair
And bite me like that
It'll seems more like a song
And less like it's math
When you pull on my hair
And bite me like that
And bite me like that
And scratch me and bite me like that

Let's sail away
Past the noise of the bay
Let's sail away
Past the birth and death of the day
Let's sail away
To where the blues and greens
Swirl into gray
Let's sail away
Let's sail away
Past the cradle of these waves
Let's sail away
Past the tide and its slow decay
Let's sail away
To where the water goes
Some endless open space
Let's sail away
Take only what you need, my love
And leave the rest behind
Don't be afraid of where we go, my love
I promise we'll be fine
Now you are the only one that's mine
Let's sail away
Past the reflections of the light
Let's sail away
Floating weightless through the night
Let's sail away
Like a photograph
Fading to all white
It's finally all right
Forget all the mistakes, my love
They won't be made again
Leave the photos in the drawer, my love
We no longer need them
We both know where we've been
Let's sail away
Disappearing in the mist
Let's sail away
With a whisper and a kiss
Or vanish from a road somewhere
Like Tereza and Tomas
Suspended in this bliss

The city has sex with itself I suppose
As the concrete collides while the scenery grows
And the lonely once bandaged lay fully exposed
Having undressed their wounds for each other
And there's a boy in a basement with a four track machine
He's been strumming and screaming all night down there
The tape hiss will cover the words that he sings
But they say it's better to bury your sadness
In a graveyard or garden that waits for the spring
To awake from its sleep and burst into green
Well, I've cried
And you would think I'd feel better for it
But the sadness just sleeps
And it stays in my spine
For the rest of my life
And I've learned
And you'd think I'd be something more now
But it just goes to show
It is not what you know
It's what you were thinking at the time
This feeling's familiar, I've been here before
In a kitchen this quiet I waited for
A sign or just something
That might reassure me of anything close
To meaning or motion, with a reason to move
I needed something I want to be close to
And I scream
But I still don't know why I do it
Because the sound never stays, it just swells and decays
So what is the point?
Why try
To fight what is now so certain?
The truth is all that I am
Is a passing event
That will be forgotten

Now that it's June
We'll sleep out in the garden
And if it rains
We'll just sink into the mud
Where it is quiet
And much cooler than the house is
And there's no clocks
Or phones to wake us up
Because I have learned
That nothing is as pressing
As the one who is pressing
Would like you to believe
And I'm content
To walk a little slower
Because there's nowhere that...
I really need to be
And I find that life is easier
When it is just a blur
With no details to confuse
Who or what or where I was
So when the ending comes
The full regret will seem obscure
But these are days we dream about
When the sunlight paints us gold
And this apartment could not be prettier
As we danced up there alone
And this TV's old
The color's fucked
Do you see the difference in the shades?
But the green's still close to green, my love
And I believe we are the same
And we'll stay like this, all gold and green
Light collects and projects your heart on a movie screen
And if you close your eyes we will always be
The way we were that night you crawled inside of me
And you slept in my blood
The way you sleep now
The quietest hush
Has consumed this house
And when the doctors have gone
And you sweat through the bed
With all these pictures and pills
They piled around your head
Just rest now
And in a moment you'll know everything
Was it all a dream?
It's too vague now to recount
An outline of the one you loved
In a life that was
That no longer will be
Stands above you
As you sleep

Touch, lying on the floor
Wishing this could last
Knowing that it can't
Soon you will leave
And I'll be on the floor
Watching the TV
Trying hard to find
A reason to move
I'm frozen in one place
Staring at the screen
Listening to the rain
Falling on the street
Some days go on too long
To know, no one can hang out tonight
Here, where the carpet's cool and soft
Underneath the clock
I feel my weary heart is put to rest
You gather around your friends
The connection that you feel
When the night has not yet died
You are new
(And near now to someone)
With a promise of a love
(You used to love)
you will probably never find
(When you were young)
(When all was gold and you two touched)
A touch that you can really feel
(And felt the flutter underneath your skin)
The brokenness inside
(You stood in glowing rooms)
(The light dripping from both of you)
As hope and less collide
(And nothing since has felt as radiant or real)
And nothing is real
Love, there's nothing more I want
Than just one night
That's free of doubt and sadness
One night, one night, one night
One night that I can really feel

Here's a scale, weigh it out and you'll find, easily
More than sufficient doubt that these colors you see
were picked in advance by some careful hand
With an absolute concept of beauty
They are smeared and these blurs come in random order
And they color the eyes of your former lovers
Hers were green like July,
Except when she cried they were red
Now I know a disease that these doctors can’t treat
You contract on the day you accept all you see
Is a mirror, and a mirror is all it can be
A reflection of something we’re missing
And language just happened, it was never planned
And it’s inadequate to describe where I am
In the room of my house where the light's never been
Waiting for this day to end
And these clocks keep unwinding and completely ignore
Everything that we hate or adore
Once the page of a calendar is turned it’s no more
So tell me then, what was it for?
Oh tell me, what was it for

There's a middle-aged woman, she's dragging her feet,
She carries baskets of clothes to a laundromat.
While the Mexican children kick rocks into the street,
And they laugh in a language I don't understand.
But I love them, why do I love them?

So the neighborhood's dimming, I smoke on the porch,
Watch the people as they pass enclosed inside their cars.
On their faces just anger or disappointment,
I start wishing there was something I could offer them.
A consolation, what could I offer them?

Well, they are sad in their suburbs, robots water the lawn
And everything they touch gets dusted spotless.
And so they start to believe they've not touched anything at all,
And the cars in the driveway only multiply.
Well, they are lost in their houses,
I've heard them sing in the shower,
Making speeches to their sister on the telephone.
Saying, "You come home, woman, you come here,
Don't stay so far away from me."
This weather has me wanting love more tangible.
Something I can hold,
'Cause it's getting cold.

Let's hold up our fists to the flame in the sky
To block out the light that's reaching for our eyes
'Cause it, 'cause it would blind us.
Yeah, it will blind us.

Well, I've locked my actions in the grooves of routine
So I may never be free of this apathy.
But I wait for a letter that's coming to me,
She sends me pictures of the ocean in an envelope.
So there still is hope, yes, I can be healed,
There is someone looking for what I've concealed
In my secret drawer, in my pockets deep
You will find the reasons that I can't sleep,
And you will still want me.
But will you still want me?
Will you still want me?

Well I said, "Come for the week, you can sleep in my bed
And pass through my life like a dream through my head,
It will, it will be easy.
I'll make it easy."

But, all I have for the moment is a song to pass the time
And a melody to keep me from worrying.
Some simple progression to keep my fingers busy,
And words that are sure to come back to me.
And they'll be laughing.
And they'll be laughing.
My mediocrity, my mediocrity.
Yeah, they'll be laughing.
Yeah, they'll be laughing.
They will be laughing.

'So long, everything' he shouted,
then he ran next door to Margot's house.

'I'm moving' he said.

'Where' asked Margot.

'Two weeks away' said Mitchell.

'Where is that' asked Margot.

'It's everywhere I will be after
I walk for two weeks' said Mitchell.
'I have lived in the same place for a
long time. It is time for me to go some
place else.'

'No' said Margot, 'you have only lived
next door for fifteen years.'

'Sixteen' said Mitchell.

'Fifteen, six, what's the difference'
said Margot. 'I want you to stay next
door forever.'

'I can't' said Mitchell. 'I do not want to
go wake up in the same old bedroom and
eat breakfast in the same old kitchen.
Every room in my house is the same old
room because I have been there too long.'

You turn on a spindle,
you're so much looser now but you're not
explaining how you've gained such new
repose. I touch the clasp of your locket
with its picture held, some secret you
wouldn't tell but let it choke your neck.
So we imagine a darkness where all shapes
divide, solids changing into light with a burst
of heat so bright.

Well fine don't you do what I want you to,
don't degrade yourself the way that I do
because you don't depend upon all the shit
that I use to make my moods improve.

'And you look at me and think 'same old
face, same old tail, same old scale, same
old walk, same old talk' said Margot.

'No' said Mitchell, 'I like your face, tail,
scale, walk and talk.'

'I like you.'

'I like you too, said Mitchell. He walked
to the door. 'I must pack' he said.

Near a sea of pianos, there were waves
of chords that crashed against the
shore in one huge and useless roar.
And there were girls bringing water,
like a dream they came to cool the
fever of my brain and soothe my
burning throat. And they made me a
necklace, hanging beads of sweat on a
string of my regrets and placed it
round my neck.

They were singing don't you do what
you've wanted to, don't destroy yourself
like those cowards do. Maybe the sun
keeps coming up because it's gotten
used to you and your constant need for proof.

Did you expect it all to stop
At the wave of your hand?
Like the sun's just gonna drop
If it's night you demand.
Well, in the dark we're just air
So the house might dissolve,
But once we're gone, who's gonna care
If we were ever here at all?
Well, summer's gonna come,
It's gonna cloud our eyes again.
No need to focus
When there's nothing that's worth seeing.

So we trade liquor for blood
In an attempt to tip the scales.
I think you lost what you loved
In that mess of details.
They seemed so important at the time,
But now you can't even recall
Any names, faces, or lines,
It's more the feeling of it all.
Well, winter's gonna end,
I'm gonna clean these veins again
So close to dying that I finally can start living.

The fragile keep secrets
Gathered in pockets
And they will sell them for nothing.
A cheap watch or locket
That kind of gold washes off.

And the sad act like lepers,
They stick to the shadows,
They long to ring bells of warning
To tell of their coming
So that the pure can shut their doors.

The angry are animals,
Senseless and savage,
They act without order
In logical lapses,
They stain their mouths with blood.

So take my hand,
This barren land is alive tonight.
Oh, the corn has grown stalks
That form a wall to hide.
But the wind carries sounds
That I can't see from beyond that line.
Then the stalks begin to sway...
Oh, stay with me, Arienette,
Until the wolves are away.

The wicked are vultures
And they bake in the canyons,
They circle in sunlight
And wait for their victims
To collapse and call to them.

The desperate are water,
They'll run down forever
And soak into silence,
And end up together.

In a dark and distant, dark and distant place,
So don't leave me here with only mirrors watching me.
This house, it holds nothing but the memories,
And the moon, it leaves silver but never sleep.
And then the silver turns to gray...
Oh stay with me, Arienette,
Until the wolves are away.

to moonn 6pence from shootingstar



The phone slips from a loose grip
Words were missed then, some apology
I didn’t want to tell you this
No, it’s just some guy she's been hanging out with
I don’t know, the past couple weeks I guess
Well, thank you and hang up the phone
Let the funeral start
Hear the casket close
Let’s pin split-black ribbon to your overcoat
Well, laughter pours from under doors
In this house, I don’t understand that sound no more
It seems artificial, like a T.V. set
Well, haligh, haligh, haligh, haligh
This weight it must be satisfied
You offer only one reply
You know not what you do
But you tear and tear your hair from roots
From that same head you have twice removed now
A lock of hair you said would prove
Our love would never die
Well ha ha ha
I remember everything
The words we spoke on freezing South Street
And all those mornings watching you get ready for school
You combed your hair inside that mirror
The one you painted blue and glued with jewelry tears
Something about those bright colors
would always make you feel better
But now we speak with ruined tongues
And the words we say aren’t meant for anyone
It’s just a mumbled sentence to a passing acquaintance
But there was once you
You said you hate my suffering
And you understood
And you’d take care of me
You'd always be there
Well where are you now?
Haligh, haligh, haligh, haligh
The plans were never finalized
But left to hang like yarn and twine
Dangling before my eyes
As you tear and tear your hair from roots
From that same head you have twice removed
A lock of hair you said would prove
Our love would never die
And I sing and sing of awful things
The pleasure that my sadness brings
As my fingers press onto the strings
In yet another clumsy chord
Haligh, haligh, an awful lie
This weight will now be satisfied
I'm gonna give you only one reply
I know not who I am
But I talk in the mirror
To the stranger that appears
Our conversations are circles
Always one sided
Nothing is clear
Except we keep coming back
To this meaning that I lack
He says the choices were given
Now I must live them
Or just not live
But do you want that

Now and again it seems worse than it is,
but mostly the view is accurate.
You see your breath in the air
as you climb up the stairs
to that coffin you call your apartment.

And you sink in your chair,
brush the snow from your hair
and drink the cold away.
You're not really sure
what you're doing this for
but you need something to fill up the days.
A few more hours.

There's a dream in my brain that just won’t go away.
It's been stuck there since it came a few nights ago
I’m standing on a bridge in the town where I lived
as a kid with my mom and my brothers.
And then the bridge disappears
and I’m standing on air
with nothing holding me.
And I hang like a star,
fucking glow in the dark,
for all those starving eyes to see,
like the ones we’ve wished on.

But now I’m confused.
Is this death really you?
Do these dreams have any meaning?
No. No, I think it's more like a ghost
that's been following us both.
Something vague that we're not seeing

Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset
Swiftly go the days
Sunrise, sunset, you wake up then you undress
It always is the same
The sunrise and a sun sets
You are lying while you confess
Keep trying to explain
The sunrise and the sun sets
You realize and then you forget
What you have been trying to retain

But everybody knows it's all about the things
That get stuck inside of your head
Like the songs your roommate sings
Or a vision of her body as she stretches out on your bed
you raise her hands in the air
Ask her 'When was the last time you looked in the mirror?
Cause you've changed, yeah, you've changed

The sunrise, the sunset, you're hopeful and then you regret
The circle never breaks
With a sunrise and sunset, there's a change of heart or address
Is there nothing that remains?
For a sunrise or a sunset, you're manic or you're depressed
Will you ever feel ok?
For a sunrise or a sunset, your lover is an actress
Did you really think she'd stay?
For a sunrise or a sunset, you're either coming or you just left
But you're always on the way
Towards a sunrise or a sunset, a scribble or a sonnet
They are really just the same
To the sunrise or the sunset, the master and his servant
Have exactly the same fate
It's a sunrise and a sunset, from a cradle to a casket
There is no way to escape
The sunrise or the sunset, hold your sadness like a puppet
Keep putting on the play

But everything you do is leading to the point
Where you just won't know what to do
And the moment that you're laughing
There is someone there who will be laughing louder than you
So it's true, the trick is complete
You've become everything you said you never would be
You're a fool, you're a fool

Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset
The sunrise and the sun sets
Sunrise, sunset, the sunrise, the sun sets
The sunrise, the sun sets

Sunrise, sunset, go home to your apartment
Put the cassette in the tape deck
And let that fever play.

Sunrise, sunset, where are you, Arienette?
Where are you, Arienette?

Does he kiss your eyelids in the morning
when you start to raise your head?
And does he sing to you, incessantly,
from the space between your bed and wall?
Does he walk around all day at school,
with his feet inside your shoes?
Looking down every few steps
to pretend he walks with you?
Oh, Does he know that place below your neck
that's your favorite to be touched?
And does he cry through broken sentences like,
"I love you far too much"?

Does he lay awake listening to your breath?
Worried you smoke too many cigarettes?
Is he coughing now?
On a bathroom floor?
For every speck of tile
There's a thousand more
You won't ever see
But must hold inside yourself
Eternally

Well, I drug your ghost across the country
And we plotted out my death
In every city, memories would whisper,
"Here is where you rest."

I was determined in Chicago
But I dug my teeth into my knees
And I settled for a telephone
Sang into your machine,

"You are my sunshine,
My only sunshine.
You are my sunshine,
My only sunshine."

And I kissed a girl with a broken jaw
That her father gave to her
She had eyes bright enough to burn me ;
They reminded me of yours
And in a story told, she was a little girl in a red-rouge, sun-bruised field
And there were rows of ripe tomatoes, where a secret was concealed
And it rose like thunder
Clapped under our hands
And it stretched for centuries
To a diary entry's end
Where I wrote,

"You make me happy,
Oh, when skies are gray.
You make me happy
Oh, when skies are gray, and gray, and gray."

Well the clock's heart it hangs inside its open chest
With its hands stretched towards the calendar hanging itself
But I will not weep
For those dying days
For all the ones who've left
There's a few that stayed
And they found me here
And pulled me from the grass
Where I was laid

At the center of the world
There's a statue of a girl,
She is standing near a well
With a bucket bare and dry.
I went and looked her in the eyes
And she turned me into sand,
This clumsy form that I despise
It scattered easy in her hand.
And came to rest upon a beach
With a million others there,
We sat and waited for the sea
To stretch out so that we could disappear
Into the endlessness of blue,
Into the horror of the truth,
See, we are far less than we knew.
Yeah, we are far less than we knew.

But we knew what we could taste.
Girls found honey to drench our hands.
Men cut marble to mark our graves,
Saying, "we'll need something to remind us
Of all the sweetness that has passed through us."
(Fresh sangria and lemon tea.)
The priests dressed children for choir
(White-robed small voices praise Him.)
But found no joy in what was sung,
The funeral had begun.

In the middle of the day,
When you drive home to your place
From that job that makes you sleep
Back to the thoughts that keep you awake,
Long after night has come to claim
Any light that still remains
In the corner of the frame
That you put around her face.

Two pills just weren't enough,
The alarm clock's going off
But you're not waking up,
This isn't happening, happening, happening, happening, happening.
It is.

You follow the footsteps
echoes leading down a hall
To a room, there's music playing
Tiny bells with moving parts
Here the shadows make things ugly
an effect quite undesirable
And The gold and yellow daylight
Grows like ivy across the wall
And it bounces off of the painted porcelain
A tiny dancing doll
Her body spins as she pirouettes
Again the world suddenly seems small
On an off-white, subtle morning
You stretch your legs in the front seat
The road has made a vacuum
Where our voices used to be
And you lay your head onto my shoulder
Pour like water over me
So if I just exist for the next ten minutes of this drive that would be fine
And all the trees that line this curb would be rejoicing and alive
Soon all the joy that pours from everything makes fountains of your eyes
Because you finally understand the movement of a hand waving good-bye

Tomorrow when I wake up
I’m finding my brother
And making him take me back down to the water
That lake where we sailed, and we laughed with our father
I will not desert him
I will not desert him

No matter how I may wish for a coffin so clean
Or these trees to undress all their leaves onto me
I put my face in the dirt and then finally I'll see
The sky that has been avoiding me.

I started this letter
I’m going to send it to Ruba
It'll be blessed by her eyes on the gulf coast of Florida
With her feet in the sand,
And one hand on her swimsuit,
She'll recite the prayer of my pen

Saying, "Time take us forward.
Relief from this longing.
They can land that plane on my heart;
I don’t care.
Just give me November,
The warmth of a whisper,
In the freezing darkness of my room."

But no matter what I would do in an attempt to replace
All these pills that I take, trying to balance my brain
See the curious girl with that look on her face
So surprised she stares out from her display case

There is a man holding a megaphone, so he must have been the voice of God. The bystanders claimed they saw angels flying up and down the block. Well, they must have been attached to wires. I'd seen one laying in the lawn with a broken arm, so I called 911. Well that is one less founded opinion. One more cause for a dispute. So the street filled, like a basin, up with cameras and their crews and they washed away the rumors leaving just the concrete truth. It was a spectacle. No, I-I mean a miracle. So then I fell like that girl from a balance beam. A gymnasium of eyes were all holding on to me. I lifted one foot to cross the other and I felt myself slipping. It was a small mistake. Sometimes that is all it takes.

Now I'm staring at my wrist, hoping that the time is right. When the planets will align. There will be no planets to align. Just the carcass of the sun and those little painted marbles spinning senseless through an endless black sky. [and so it never started and it will never stop just like I am and you are] It was in a foreign hotel's bathtub I baptized myself in change. And one by one I drowned all of the people I had been. I emerged to find the parallels were fewer. I was cleansed. I looked in the mirror and someone new was there. But, I was as helpless as a chess piece when I was lifted up by someone's hand and delivered from the corner my enemies had got me in. But in all of my salvation I still felt imprisoned inside that holding cell that is myself.

So I wait for the day when I'll hear the key as it turns in the lock and the guard will say to me, "Oh my patient prisoner you have waited for this day and finally you are free! You are free! You are freezing." Now I'm staring at the sun, waiting for it to explode. Because a day is gonna come, don't know when but it will come and we'll finally know the way out of here. And I will throw away this wrinkled map and my chart of stars and compass, cracked. And I'll climb that tree all wet with sap to avoid the hungry beasts below. I'll cut out my love's tongue and sing of a graveyard gray and a garden green and then we won't have to worry no more. No we won't ever wonder again about how this song or story ends about how this song and story will end.

there are stories in the soil, loose leaves cover the ground
there's volumes in the forest, no one reads out loud
if i could take them down off of that mountain shelf
we used to climb but no one tries to go up that far now yeah

we're all too busy working, entertaining ourselves
forty hours television and prescription pills
well i take two a day to make my brain behave
it never does but who's to say at least my doctor gets paid

so that's fine, yeah come by we'll take the afternoon off
we can kiss and undress or if you want just talk
cause i've got nothing real, just empty space to fill
and you're my girl i like your style just imagine all the time we could kill

and time's not poison but once you drink it all you'll die
so let's just sip it real slow
yeah we can nurse it all night
try to believe that once it's gone
we'll pour another round and come back to life
come right back

i guess i'm moving faster now or that's what they said
and though some days still take forever i can't disagree
because it seems to me that i wake up and sleep
look in the mirror have no idea what happened in between

but i remember counting days down 'til the year could be done
so i could scatter all my notebooks on the prep school lawn
and disappear again into a summer's bliss
of staying out sleeping in and getting drunk with my friends

that's gone and i know that it won't ever come back
i accept i won't cling to what i had in the past
but life's a slippery slope, regret's the steepest hill
hope for the best, plan for the worst and maybe wind up somewhere
in the middle

and i'm not saying that i know what i want
but i know what i don't, don't want to rot in my room
and never know what could have been
believe what everyone else tells me is true
yeah, they say 'true'
that's what they say

the kitchen is cold
but the coffee is warm
and the suns coming up
the day has just begun
and your already bored.

bored of cheering me up
bored of calming me down
bored of drying my eyes
but there once was a time when you were the one.
you were the blue of the sky
you came after the storm
you were the switch on the wall
in the dark of the hall
im still fumbling for

cuz im lost in the black
i dont know where I am.
arms stretched out in front
im calling your name
just as loud as I can

I know theres words that we will never speak
and the questions cant be answered easily
but I wanted to be easy so
nod your head if the plans have changed
shake it, love, if they've stayed the same
smile at me and I will stay
start to cry and I'll go away
just please dont leave me guessing.

so you made me come
then you sent me away
like a messenger bird
so I circled the earth
blown away in the wind
but I always returned
with some new little song
some sad story to tell
of a breif love affair
with a girl I compared to you and she failed
you said you dont want me to beg
then you said get down on your knees
cuz you knew that I would
if I do any good satisfying your needs.

and I know all about those things we cannot speak
and just so you know well they dont bother me
so you dont have to be worried
just nod your head if the plans have changed
shake it, love, if they stayed the same
smile at me and I will stay
start to cry and I'll go away
just please dont keep me waiting

just nod your head if your mind's been changed
shake it, love, if some hope remains
just say the word and of course ill stay
roll your eyes and Ill go away
just please dont leave me guessing.
just please dont keep me waiting.

Well, the future spills its intangibles
An unknown set of variables
A path that's splitting infinitely up ahead

So tell me what's the use to pick and choose
From what you should or shouldn't do?
That's time spent better sleeping in your bed

Or wide awake in a shopping mall
Trying clothes on from off of the wall
Yeah, anything to entertain yourself

Cause a costume can be quite comfortable
It can make you feel more beautiful
It can even make you look like someone else

But it's still you, so there's nothing you can do
Like a bad habit, the one you couldn't kick
There it always is
And it's nothing that no doctor's gonna fix

They pat your back bruised with their accolades
And all four walls are a trophy case
But that doesn't make it any less of a cage

But you can make it all less difficult
By embracing the ephemeral
Then you'd never have to worry or explain

Cause if it's really all just physical
Then my memory's immaterial
So why then do I remember you at all?

But I do, I do, my friend, I've seen your face
We shared a cup, I know the taste
Its sweetness is relentless on my lips

So help me drink in everything that is
Like a freed convict, drunk on redemption
From the way I've been
Well I swear this time that things will be different

Well, right and wrong, they have never been that far apart
For those who'd write that sentence where you hang
We will be lifted up from all of this
Yeah, we will transcend the insignificance of our existence
Yeah your body's gone, but angel you will live

Now your body's gone, but angel you will live

Your picture is far too big to look at kid.
Your eyes won't open wide enough
and you are constantly surrounded by the swirling stream
of what is and what was.
Well, we've all made out predictions but the truth still isn't out.
So if you want to see the future, go stare into a cloud.

And keep trying to find your way out of that maze of memories.
It all sort of looks familiar
until you get up close and it's different, clearly.
But each time you turn a corner,
you're right back where you were
and your only hope is that forgetting might make a door appear.

Is it your fear of being buried that makes you so afraid to speak?
An avalanche of opinions
like the one that fell that I am now underneath.
It was my voice that moved the first rock
and I would do it all again.
So I mean, it's cool if you keep quiet but I like singing.

So I'll be holding my note and stomping and strumming
and feeling so very lucky.
There is nothing I know except that this lifetime is one moment
and wishing will just leave me empty.

So you can try and live in darkness but you will never shake the light.
It will greet you every morning
and it will make you more aware with its absence at night,
when you're wrapped up in your blanket,
babe, that comfortable cocoon.
But I have seen the day of your awakening boy
and it's coming soon.

So you can lose yourself in liquor
and you can praise the clouded mind
but it isn't what you're thinking
no, it's the course of history your position in line.
You're just a piece of the puzzle so
I think you'd better find your place.
And don't go blaming you knowledge on some fruit you ate.

Because there's been a great deal of discussion, yes,
about the properties of man.
Animal or Angel? You were carved from bone
but your heart, is just sand.
And the wind is gonna scatter it and cover everything with love.
So if it makes you happy, then keep kneeling, Mom,
but I'm standing up.

Because this veil is has been lifted.
Yes, My eyes are wet with clarity.
I have been a witness to such wonders.
Oh I've searched for them across the country
but I think I'll be returning now
to the town where I was born.
And I understand you must keep moving,
friend, but I'm headed home.

I'm gonna follow the road and let the scenery weeping by
easily enter my body.
I'll send you all this message in code,
under ground, over mountains,
through forests and deserts and cities.
All across electric wire, it's a baited line.
The hook is in deep, boys, there is no more time.
So you can struggle in the water
and be too stubborn to die
or you could just let go and be lifted to the sky.

The rain it started tappin'
On the window near my bed
There was a loophole in my dreamin'
So I got out of it
And to my surprise my eyes were wide and already open
Just my nightstand and my dresser
Where those nightmares had just been

So I dressed myself and left then
Out into the gray streets
But everything seemed different
And completely new to me
The sky the trees, houses, buildings, even my own body
And each person I encountered
I couldn't wait to meet

And I came upon a doctor
Who appeared in quite poor health
I said there's nothing that I can do for you
you can't do for yourself
He said oh yes you can, just hold my hand,
I think that that would help
So I sat with him awhile
Then I asked him how he felt

He said I think I'm cured
No, in fact, I'm sure of it
Thank you, stranger
For your therapeutic smile

So that's how I learned the lesson
That everyone's alone
And your eyes must do some raining
If you're ever gonna grow
And when crying don't help
You can't compose yourself
It's best to compose a poem
An honest verse of longing
Or a simple song of hope

That's why I'm singing baby don't worry
'Cause now I got your back
And every time you feel like crying
I'm gonna try and make you laugh
And if I can't
If it just hurts too bad
Then we'll wait for it to pass
And I will keep you company for those days so long and black

And we'll keep working on the problem
We know we'll never solve
Of love's uneven remainders
Our lives are fractions of a whole
But if the world could remain within a frame
Like a painting on a wall
Then I think we'd see the beauty then
We'd stand staring in awe

At our still lives posed
Like a bowl of oranges
Like a story told
By the fault-lines and the soil

Is it true what I heard about the Son of God
Did he come to save, did he come at all
And if I dried his feet
With my dirty hair
Would he make me clean again

They say they don't know when but a day is gonna come
When there won't be a moon and there won't be a sun
It will just go black
It will just go back
To the way it was before

I knew a lovely girl with such pretty pride
And every man wanted her and so did I
And so did I
But she up and died
In a fit of vanity

Now men with purple hearts carry silver guns
And they will kill a man for what his father has done
But what my father did
You know it don't mean shit
I'm not him

So you think I need some discipline well I've had my share
I have been sent to my room, I've been sat in a chair
And I held my tongue
I didn't plug my ears
No I got a good talking to

Now I don’t know why but I still try to smile
When they talk at me like I’m just a child
Well I’m not a child
No I am
Much younger than that

And now I have read some books and I have grown quite brave
If I could just speak up I think I would say
That there is no truth
There is only you
And what you make the truth

So I will just sing my songs and I'll pass a hat
Then I'll leave your town and I'll never look back
No I don't look back
Because the road is clear
Layed out ahead of me

I'll get home and meet my friends at our favorite bar
We'll get some lighter heads for our heavy hearts
And we will share a drink
Yeah we'll share our fears
And they will know how I love them
They will know how I love
They will know how I love them
I am nothing without their love

Now I don't know when but a day is gonna come
When there won't be a moon and there won't be a sun
It will all go black
It will all go back
To the way it is supposed to be

Is it true what they say about the Son of God
Did he die for us, did he die at all
And if I sold my soul
For a bag of gold
To you which one of us would be the foolish one
Which one if us would be the fool
Which one if us would be the fool
Which one if us would be the fool

Could you please start explaining
You know I need some understanding
I could do with some exaplaining
You know I want to understand

On a string
On a string
on a string
I was held
The way I moved, can you tell
My actions are orchestrated from above
And so I swing and I sway
Wave my hand, kick my leg
And it's always right with the music
(katie and tiffany: till all that swaying starts to make you sick)
For a song, I was bought
Now I lie, when I talk
With a careful eye on the cue card
Onto a stage, I was pushed
With my sorrow well rehearsed
So give me all your pity and your money now
All of it
(katie and tiffany:
we used to think that sound was something pure)
But if I could act like this was my real life
And not some cage where I've been placed
Well then I could tell you
The truth like I used to
And not be afraid of sounding fake
Now all that anyone's listening for are the mistakes
(katie: sorry!)
No it's ok, it's ok
One, two, three!
One, two, three!
In a house by myself
I hear the ice start to melt
And I watch the rooftops weep for the sunlight
And I know what must change
Fuck my face, fuck my name
They are brief and false advertisements
For a soul, I don't have
Something true I have lacked
I spent my whole life trying to make up for it
But I found, in a song
And in the people I love
They will lift me up out of darkness
And now my door
It stands open, I'm inviting everyone in
We're gonna laugh, we're gonna drink
Until the morning comes
That's what we're gonna do!
Come on!
Come on!

There's a man holding a megaphone
he must have been the voice of God
The bystanders claimed they saw angels
flying up and down the block
They must have been attached to wires
I seen one laying in the lawn
with a broken arm
so I called 911
Well that's one less founded opinion
One more cause for a dispute
So the street filled like a basin
up with cameras and their crews
and they washed away the rumors
leaving just the concrete truth
It was a spectacle
No, I mean a miracle
And so I fell like that girl from a balance beam
A gymnasium of eyes
all were holding on to me
I lifted one foot to cross the other
and I felt myself slipping
It was a small mistake
Sometime's that's all it takes
Now I'm staring at my wrist, hoping that the time is right
When the planets will align
There will be no planets to align
Just the carcass of the sun
and those little painted marbles spinning
senseless through an endless black sky
(and so it never started and it will never stop
just like I am and you are)
It was in a foreign hotel's bathtub
I baptized myself and changed
And one by one I drowned all of the people I had been.
And I emerged to find the parallels were fewer
I was cleansed
I looked in the mirror and
someone new was there
but I was as helpless as a chess piece
when I was lifted up by someone's hand
And delivered from the corner my enemies had got me in
But in all of my salvation I still felt imprisoned'Inside
that holding cell
That is myself
So I wait for the day when I hear the key
as it turns in the lock and the guard will say to me:
"Oh my patient prisoner
you have waited for this day and finally....
You are free! You are free! You are free!"
Now I'm staring at the sun
waiting for it to explode
Because a day is gonna come, don't know when
but it will come
And we'll finally know the way
out of here.
And I will throw away this wrinkled map
and my chart of stars and compass, cracked
And I'll climb that tree all wet with sap,
to avoid the hungry beasts below
I'll cut out my lover's tongue and sing
of a graveyard gray and a garden green
and we won't have to worry no more
No, we won't have to wonder again
about how this song or story ends,
about how this song and story will end

Laura are you still living there
on your estate of sorrow?
you used to leave it occasionally
but now you don't even bother
to ride the commuter train
west to Chicago,
to stroll through the greenery
in the park past the statues

how their eyes seemed to follow you
like a hated addiction
their beauty carved out of
absolutes you could never claim
or even envision

Laura you were the saddest song
in the shape of a woman
yeah I thought you were beautiful
but I wept with your movements
but I hope that you're laughing now
from that place on the carpet
where we shared a sleeping bag
in your sister's apartment

oh how she would worry so
you know I was just a stranger
but she asked me to care for you
yes she did
and I went and betrayed her

but do you know we're in high demand
Laura, us, people who suffer
because we don't take to arguing
and we're quick to surrender

well I think I would call tonight
if I still had your number
your thoughts have always laid close to mine
we were both skipping supper
but you should never be embarrassed by
your trouble with living
cause it's the ones with the sorest throats, Laura,
who have done the most singing

La la la la la la. la la la lah...

The animals laugh from the dark of the wilderness.
A baby cried hard in an apartment complex,
as I pass a car buried under the influence.
The city is driving me out of my mind.

I’ve seen a child he’s caught
In the sad trap of gravity
He falls from the lowest
Branch of the apple tree

And lands in the grass
And weeps for his dignity
Next time he will not aim so high
Yeah, next time neither will I

Now, a mother takes loans out
Sends her kids off to colleges
Her family’s reduced
To names on a shopping list

While a coroner kneels
Beneath the great wooden crucifix
He knows there’s worse things than being
Alone.

And so I’ve learned to retreat
At the first sign of danger
I mean, why wait around if
It’s just to surrender

And ambition I’ve found
Can lead only to failure
I do not read the reviews
No I am not singing for you
[Woo]

Well I stood droppin’ a coin
Into the pit of a well
And I would throw my whole billfold
If I thought it would help

With all these wishes I make
I should buy something real
At least a telephone
Call home

Well my teachers they built
This retaining wall of memory
All those multiple choices
I answered so quickly

And got my grades back
And forgot just as easily
But at least I got an ‘A’
And so I don’t have them to blame

Well I should stop pointing fingers
Reserve my judgment
Of all those public action figures
And cowboy presidents
So loud behind the bull-horns
So proud they can’t admit
When they’ve made a mistake

While poison ink spews
From a speech writers pen
He knows he don’t have to say it
So it don’t bother him

Honesty accuracy
It’s just popular opinion
And the approval ratings high
And so someone’s gonna die

Well ABC NBC CBS bullshit
They give us fact or fiction
I guess an even split
And each new act of war’s tonight’s entertainment
We’re still the pawns in their game

As they take eye for an eye
Until no one can see
We must stumble blindly forward
Repeating history

Well I guess we all fit into that slogan
On your fast food marquee
Red blooded white skinned and oh the blues
Oh and the blues I got the blues that’s me

Well I awoke in relief
My sheets and tubes were all tangled
Weak from whiskey and pills
In a Chicago hospital

And my father was there
In a chair by the window
Starin’ so far away
I tried talking just whispered
“So sorry so selfish”
He stopped me and said
“Child, I love you regardless
There nothing you could do
That would ever change this
I’m not angry, it happens
But you just can’t do it again”

And so now I try to keep up
I been exchanging my currency
While a million objects
Pass though my periphery
Now I’m rubbin’ my eyes
‘Cause they’re starting to bother me
I been staring too long at the screen

But where was it when I first heard
That sweet sound of humility
It came to my ears in the
Goddamned loveliest melody

How grateful I was then
To be part of the mystery
To love and to be loved
Lets just hope that is enough

I picked you out
Of a crowd and talked to you.
Said I liked your shoes,
You said, "Thanks, Can I follow you?"

So it's up the stairs,
And out of view. No prying eyes.
I poured some wine.
I asked your name;
You asked the time.

Now it's two o'clock.
The club is closed,
We are up the block.
Your hands are on me,
Pressing hard against your jeans,
Your tongue in my mouth,
Trying to keep the words from coming out,
You didn't care to know
Who else may have been you before.

I want a lover I don't have to love,
I want a girl who's too sad to give a fuck.
Where's the kid with the chemicals?
I thought he said to meet him here,
But I'm not sure.
I've got the money
If you've got the time.
He said, "It feels good."
I said "I'll give it a try."

Then my mind went dark,
We both forgot where your car was parked.
Let's just take the train.
I'll meet up with the band in the morning

Bad actors, with bad habits...
Some sad singers, they just play tragic.
And the phone is ringing,
And the van is leaving
Let's just keep touching,
Let's just keep...keep singing

I want a lover I don't have to love,
I want a boy who's so drunk he doesn't talk.
Where's the kid with the chemicals?
I got a hunger and I can't seem to get full.
I need some meaning I can memorize.
The kind I have always seems to slip my mind.

But you, but you...

You write such pretty words,
But life's no storybook.
Love's an excuse to get hurt.
And to hurt.
Do you like to hurt?
I do, I do.
Then hurt me,
Then hurt me,
Then hurt me...

Our love is dead but without limit
Like the surface of the moon
Or the land between here and the mountains
It is not these hiding places that have kept us innocent
But the way you taught me to just let it all go back
So we've learn to be as faithless
Stand behind bulletproof glass
Exchanging our affections through a drawer
And It was always horribly convenient and happening too fast
You should count your change before you're even out the door
Well, yes you should, but please return, return
To the person that you were, and I will do the same
'Cause it's too hard to belong to someone who is gone
My compass spins, but wilderness remains
Once too often I've retreated into the depths of my despair
I built a barricade to block you on the road
But standing there with all of my possessions piled higher
than a house
I felt closer to you than you ever would have known
So let's let these tiny acts of charity becommon ground
on which to build
A monument to commemorate our time
And though you say you've found another
who will surely speed you on your way
Don't let the forest grow over that path you came there by
But you will, so, so hurry up and run to the one that you love
And blind him with your kindness
And he'll make war, oh, war, on who you were before
And claim all that has spoiled in your heart
(alright, now help me out boys)
But now I tell myself I've mended under these patches of blue sky
There's still a few holes that let in a little rain
And so it's crying on my shingles
My floorboards moan under my feet
The refrigerator's whining so I've got reason to complain
But I'm not gonna bless you with such compliments
Some degrading song of praise
Like the kind that converted you to me so long ago
Because the truth is that gossip's as good as gospel in this town
You can save face but you won't ever save your soul
And that's a fact so, so hurry up and run to the one that you love
And tie him up in your likeness
And he'll become, become, oh, the prisoner I was
And know all that has spoiled in your heart
He'll know it all
He'll know all that has spoiled in your heart
So hurry up and run to the one that you love
And blind him with your kindness
And he'll make war, oh, war, on who you were before
And claim all that has spoiled in your heart
Yeah, And claim all that has spoiled in your heart
(So hurry up and run to the one that you love
And blind him with your kindness
And he'll make war, oh, war, on who you were before
And claim all that has spoiled in your heart
Yeah, And claim all that has spoiled)

there is no beginning to the story
a bookshelf sinks into the sand
& a language learned & forgot,
in turn, is studied once again
it's a shocking bit of footage
viewed from a shitty TV screen
you can squint at it through snowy static
to make out the meaning
just keep stretching the antennae,
hoping that it will come clear
we need some reception, a higher message,
just tell us what to fear
because i don't know what tommorow brings
it is alive with such possibilities
all i know is i feel better when i sing
burdens are lifted from me,
that is my voice rising!

so michael, please keep the tape rolling
boys, keep strumming those guitars
we need a record of our failures
we must document our love
i have sat too long in my silence
i have grown too old in my pain
to shed this skin, be born again,
it starts with the ending
so thank you friends for the time we shared
my love stays with you like sunlight & air
oh, how i truly wish i could keep hanging around here
but my joy is covering me
soon, i will disappear

it's not a movie,
no private screening
this method acting,
well, i call that living
it's like a fountain,
a door has opened
we have a problem with no solution
but to love & to be loved

so, i've made peace with the falling leaves
i see their same fate in my own body
but i won't be frightened
when i am awoken from this dream
& returned to that which gave birth to me
& the story goes on & on & on & on...

Well the future's got me worried
Such awful thoughts
My head's a carousel of pictures
The spinning never stops
I just want someone to walk in front
And I'll follow the leader
Like when I fell under the weight of a schoolboy crush
Started carrying her books and doing lots of drugs
I almost forgot who I was
But I came to my senses
Now I'm trying to be assertive
I'm making plans
Gonna rise to the occasion yeah
Meet all their demands
But all I do is just lay in bed
And hide under the covers
Yeah I know I should be brave
But i'm just too afraid of all this change
And it's too hard to focus through all this doubt
I keep making these to-do lists but nothing gets crossed out
Working on the record seems pointless now
When the world ends who's gonna hear it?
But I'm trying to take some comfort in written words
Yeah, Tim, I heard your album and it's better than good
When we get off tour I think we should
Hang and black out together
'Cause I been feeling sentimental for days gone by
All the summers singing, drinking, laughin
Wasting our time
Remember all the songs and the way we smiled
In those basements made of music
But now I've got to crawl to get anywhere at all
I'm not as strong as I thought

So when I'm lost in a crowd
I hope that you'll pick me out
How I long to be found
The grass grew high, I laid down
Now I'm waiting for a hand
To lift me up, help me stand
I've been laying so low
Don't wanna lay here no more
Don't wanna lay here no more

Everything that happens is supposed to be
And it's all predetermined can't change your destiny
Guess I'll just keep moving
Someday maybe I'll get to where I'm going

Your picture is far too big to look at kid.
Your eyes won't open wide enough
and you are constantly surrounded by the swirling stream
of what is and what was.
Well, we've all made out predictions but the truth still isn't out.
So if you want to see the future, go stare into a cloud.

And keep trying to find your way out of that maze of memories.
It all sort of looks familiar
until you get up close and it's different, clearly.
But each time you turn a corner,
you're right back where you were
and your only hope is that forgetting might make a door appear.

Is it your fear of being buried that makes you so afraid to speak?
An avalanche of opinions
like the one that fell that I am now underneath.
It was my voice that moved the first rock
and I would do it all again.
So I mean, it's cool if you keep quiet but I like singing.

So I'll be holding my note and stomping and strumming
and feeling so very lucky.
There is nothing I know except that this lifetime is one moment
and wishing will just leave me empty.

So you can try and live in darkness but you will never shake the light.
It will greet you every morning
and it will make you more aware with its absence at night,
when you're wrapped up in your blanket,
babe, that comfortable cocoon.
But I have seen the day of your awakening boy and it's coming soon.

So go ahead and lose yourself in liquor
and you can praise the clouded mind
but it isn't what you're thinking
no, it's the course of history your position in line.
You're just a piece of the puzzle so
I think you'd better find your place.
And don't go blaming you knowledge on some fruit you ate.

Because there's been a great deal of discussion, yes,
about the properties of man.
Animal or Angel? You were carved from bone
but your heart, is just sand.
And the wind is gonna scatter it and cover everything with love.
So if it makes you happy, then keep kneeling, Mom,
but I'm standing up.

Because this veil is has been lifted.
Yes, My eyes are wet with clarity.
I have been a witness to such wonders.
Oh I've searched for them across the country
but I think I'll be returning now
to the town where I was born.
And I understand you must keep moving, friend, but I'm headed home.

I'm gonna follow the road and let the scenery weeping by
easily enter my body.
I'll send you all this message in code,
under ground, over mountains, through forests and deserts and cities.
All across electric wire, it's a baited line.
The hook is in deep, boys, there is no more time.
So you can struggle in the water
and be too stubborn to die
or you could just let go and be lifted to the sky.

I have a friend, he’s mostly made of pain
He wakes up, drives to work and straight back home again
He once cut one of my nightmares out of paper
I thought it was beautiful, I put it on a record cover
And I tried to tell him that he had a sense
Of color and composition so magnificent
And he said thank you, please, but your flattery
It is truly not becoming me
Your eyes are poor, you’re blind, you see
No beauty ever could have come from me
I’m a waste
Of breath, of space, of time

I knew a woman she was dignified and true
Her love for her man was one of her many virtues
Until one day she found out that he had lied
And decided the rest of her life from that point on would be a lie
She was grateful for everything that had happened
And she was anxious for all that would come next
But then she wept, what did you expect
In that big old house with the car she kept
Such is life, she often said
With one day leading to the next
You get a little closer to your death
Which was fine with her, she never got upset
And with all the days she may have left
She would never clean another mess
Or fold his shirts, or look her best
She was free
To waste away alone

Last night my brother, he got drunk and drove
And this cop, he pulled him off to the side of the road
And he said officer, officer, you’ve got the wrong man
No, no, I’m a student of medicine, a son of a banker,
you don’t understand
The cop said No one got hurt, you should be thankful
And your carelessness, it is something awful
And no I can’t just let you go
And though your father’s name is known
Your decisions now are yours alone
You’re nothing but a stepping stone on a path
To debt, to loss, to shame

The last few months I’ve been living with this couple
Yeah, you know the kind who buy everything in doubles
Yeah, they fit together like a puzzle
I love their love and I am thankful
That someone actually receives the prize that was promised
By all those fairy tales that drugged us
they still do me. I’m sick, lonely
No laurel tree, just green envy
Will my number come up eventually
Like love’s some kind of lottery
Where you scratch and see what’s underneath
It’s sorry
Just one cherry
I’ll play again, get lucky

So now I hang out down by the train's depot
No, I don’t ride, I just sit and watch the people there
They remind me of wind-up cars in motion
They way they spin and turn and jockey for positions
And I wanna scream out that it all is nonsense
Their life’s one track and can’t they see it’s pointless?
But just then my knees give under me
My head feels weak and suddenly
It’s clear to see, it’s not them, but me
Who’s lost my self-identity
And I hide behind these books I read
While scribbling my poetry
Like art could save a wretch like me
With some ideal ideology
That no one could hope to achieve
And I'm never real, it's just a sketch of me
And everything I’ve made is trite and cheap and a waste
Of paint
Of tape
Of time

So I park my car down by the cathedral
Where the floodlights point up at the steeples
Choir practice is filling up with people
I hear the sound escaping as an echo
Sloping off the ceiling at an angle
When the voices blend they sound like angels
I hope there’s some room still in the middle
But when lift my voice up now to reach them
The range is too high way up in heaven
So I hold my tongue, forget the song
Tie my shoes, start walking off
And try to just keep moving on
With my broken heart and my absent god
And I have no faith but it’s all I want
To be loved
And believe
In my soul, in my soul

Well, you say that I treat you like a book on a shelf
I don't take you out that often
'Cause I know that I completed you
And that's why you are here
That's the reason you stay here
How awful that must feel

You said you'd be my dream
I could have you every night
And if by morning I'd forgotten you
Well, no big deal, that'd be all right
'Cause you're the re-occuring kind
You are the re-occuring kind
You never really leave my mind

Are you the love of my lifetime
'Cause there's been times I've had my doubts
We were just kids when I first kissed you
In the attic of my parents' house
And I wish we were there now
I took so long to figure out
What this book has been about

Now I write when I'm away
Letters that you'll never read
You said go explore those other women
The geography of their bodies
But there's just one map you'll need
You're a boomerang you'll see
You will return to me

You will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will. (etc.)

Because if you don't then this book's all lies
If you don't then my plans would all be ruined
If you don't, I'll start drinking like the way I drank before
And I just won't have a future anymore

She was a real royal lady, true patron of the arts
She said the best country singers die in the back of classic cars
So if I ever got too hungry for a suitcase or guitar
To think of them all alone in the dark
So I laid some nights beside her in a bed made for a queen
She said I kissed her different, that all the men her age were mean
Gave me anything I wanted, Oh the generosity
I took all that I could, it was free
Now the sky is a torn up denim and the clouds are just splattered paint
It's a room I'm renovating; it's a name I got to change
If I get out of California I'm going back to my home state
To tell them all that I made a mistake

And I keep looking for that blindfold faith
Lighting candles to a cynical saint
Who wants the last laugh at the fly trapped in the windowsill tape
You can go right out of your mind trying to escape
From the panicked paradox of day to day
If you can't understand something then it's best to be afraid

The whole world it loves you if you are a chic chameleon
Intersecting circles she could hang with anyone
But when conducting business she would lie about where she's from
Saying, "Life is how it is not how it was"
I learned to listen felt like I was back at school
She'd talk forever about the phases of the moon
Saying, "Everything is a cycle, you've got to let it come to you
And when it does, you will know what to do"
Without even knowing I guess I took her advice
Painted her front door it seemed a suitable goodbye
It's not that often but I think of her sometimes
Just something quaint, a couple ships in the night

And they keep moving at a glacial pace
Turning circles in a memory maze
I made a new cast of the death mask that is gonna cover my face
I had to change the combination to the safe
Hide it all behind a wall let people wait
And never trust a heart that is so bent it can't break

Hear the chimes, did you know that the wind when it blows
It is older than Rome and all of this sorrow
See the new pyramids down in old Manhattan
From the roof of a friend's I watched an empire ending
Heard it loud and long the river's Om
Time marching on to a madman's drum

Don't forget what you've learned all you give is returned
And if life seems absurd what you need is some laughter
And a season to sleep and a place to get clean
Maybe Los Angeles, somewhere no one is expecting
On a de-tox walk through the Glendale Park over sidewalk chalk
Someone wrote in red, "start over"
So I muffled my scream on an Oxnard beach
Full of fever dreams that scare you sober
Into saltless dinners

Take the fruit from the tree, break the skin with your teeth
Is it bitter or sweet? All depends on your timing
Like a meeting of chance with the train station glance
Many lifetimes had past in a instant reminded
Of a millstone house in a seaside town
When your heart gave out in a mission bed
So your wife gave birth to a funeral dirge
You woke up purged as a wailing infant
In Krung Thep, Thailand

Hear the chimes, did you know that the wind when it blows
It is older than Rome and our joy and our sorrow

Shrill as a choir of children
Urgent like the first day of May
False and inflatable feeling
Tugs at my senses, big as the Macy's Parade
One brick on top of another
Such is the measure of man
Planets are inset like diamonds
On a gravity halo, eternity's wedding band
I slept with that dealer all summer
The ecstasy is still in my spine
Coat Check I couldn't remember
Walked into the winter, came out on the other side

In the South the sun is shining
Back in the East the lights went out

Stuck on a ladder to heaven
On trial way back in The Hague
Lullaby sounds from the engine
In my Styrofoam coffin, asleep on the interstate
Black globes, old symbols of freedom
A murderer still on the lam
Cities encircled in iron
On a great silver beltway, democracy's shackled hands
Seance that brought us together
Objects we move with our minds
Coat Check and I lost the number
Short sleeves in the winter, fell back through the other side

Out in the West the cars are crashing
Up in the North the ice gave out

Saada Tekmel B'Lhouria...
Houria...

Your class, your caste, your country, sect,
your name or your tribe
There's people always dying trying to keep them alive
There's bodies decomposing in containers tonight
In an abandoned building where
Squatters made a mural of a Mexican girl
With fifteen cans of spray paint and a chemical swirl
She's standing in the ashes at the end of the world
Four winds blowing through her hair
But when great Satan's gone... the Whore of Babylon...
She just can't sustain the pressure where it's placed
She caves
The Bible's blind, the Torah's deaf, the Qur'an's mute
If you burned them all together you'd get close to the truth still
They're pouring over Sanskrit on the Ivy League moons
While shadows lengthen in the sun
Cast all the school and meditation built to soften the times
And hold us at the center while the spiral unwinds
It's knocking over fences crossing property lines
Four Winds, cry until it comes
And it's the Sum of Man slouching towards Bethlehem
A heart just can't contain all of that empty space
It breaks. It breaks. It breaks.
*
Well I went back by rented Cadillac and company jet
Like a newly orphaned refugee retracing my steps
All the way to Cassadaga to commune with the dead
They said, ""You'd better look alive""
And I was off to old Dakota where a genocide sleeps
In the Black Hills, the Badlands, the calloused East
I buried my ballast. I made my peace.
Heard Four Winds, leveling the pines
But when great Satan's gone... the Whore of Babylon...
She just can't remain with all that outer space
She breaks. She breaks. She caves. She caves.*
*반복

Leave the bright blue door on the white-washed wall.
Leave the death ledger under city hall.
Leave the joyful air in that rubber ball today.

Just leave the lilac print on the linen sheet.
Leave the bird you killed at your father's feet.
Let the sideways rain in the crooked street remain.

Leave whimpering dog in his cold kennel.
Leave the dead starlet on her pedestal.
Leave the acid kids in their green fishbowls today.

Leave the sad guitar in its hard-shell case.
Leave the worried look on your lover's face.
Let the orange embers in the fireplace remain.

Cause everything must belong somewhere.
The train off in the distance, bicycle chained to the stairs.
Everything must belong somewhere.
I know that now, that's why I'm staying here.

Leave the ocean's roar in the turquoise shell.
Leave the widower in his private hell.
Leave the liberty in that broken bell today.

Leave the epic poem on its yellowed page.
Leave the grey macaw in his covered cage.
Let the traveling band on the interstate remain.

Cause everything must belong somewhere.
Sound-stage in California, televisions in Times Square.
Everything must belong somewhere.
I know that now, that's why I'm staying here.
Yeah I know that now that's why I'm staying here.

Leave the secret talk on the trundle bed.
Leave the garden tools in the rusted shed.
Leave those bad ideas in your troubled head today.

Just leave the restless ghost in his old hotel.
Leave the homeless man out in that cardboard cell.
Let the painted horse on the carousel remain.

Cause everything must belong somewhere.
Just like the gold around your finger and the silver in his hair.
Yeah, everything must belong somewhere.
I know that now, that's why I'm staying here.
I know that now, that's why I'm staying here.

In truth, the forest hears each sound,
Each blade of grass as it lies down.
The world requires no audience.
no witnesses, no witnesses.

Leave the old town drunk on his wooden stool.
Leave the autumn leaves in the swimming pool.
Leave the poor black child in his crumbling school today.

Leave novelist in his daydream tune.
Leave the scientist in her Rubik's Cube.
Let true genius in the padded room remain.

Leave horses hair on the slanted bow.
Leave the slot machines on the riverboat.
Leave the cauliflower in the casserole today.

Leave the hot white-trash in their shopping malls.
Leave the hawks of war in their capitals.
Let the organs moan in the cathedral remain.

Cause everything must belong somewhere.
They lock the devil in the basement, God up into the air.
Yeah, everything must belong somewhere.
I know it's true, I wish you'd leave me here.
I know it's true, why don't you leave me here?

When panic grips your body and your heart is a hummingbird
Raven thoughts blacken your mind until you're breathing in reverse
All your friends and sedatives mean well but make it worse
Every reassurance just magnifies the doubt
Better find yourself a place to level out

Got a cricket for a conscience always looks the other way
A cocaine soul starts seeming like an empty cabaret
Hey, where have all the dancers gone? Now the music doesn't play
Tried to listen to the river but you couldn't shut your mouth
Better take a little time to level out

I never thought of running
My feet just led the way

Mixed up Signals
Bullet Train
Cars are switched out in the crazy rain
I could meet you any place
If the Brakeman turns my way

All this automatic writing I have tried to understand
From a psychedelic angel who was tugging on my hand
It's an infinite coincidence but it doesn't form a plan
So I'm headed for New England or the Paris of the South
Gonna find myself somewhere to level out

Are your brothels full, Oh Babylon, with merry Middlemen?
Never peer out of their periscopes from those deep opium dens
All this death must need a counterweight always someone born again
First a mother bathes her child then the other way around
The Scales always find a way to level out

I tried to pass for nothing
But my dreams gave me away

Mixed up Signals
Bullet Train
People snuffed out in the brutal rain
I could live to any age
If the Brakeman turns my way

It is an old world it's hard to remember
Like a dime store mystery
I'm a repeat first time offender
Who has rewritten history

Mixed up tea leaves
Phantom Pain
Fuzzy logic in the crazy rain
Getting better every day
If the Brakeman turns my way
Mixed up Signals
Bullet Train
Cars are switched out in the blinding rain
He'll be smiling as he seals my fate
When the Brakeman turns my way

I keep floating down the river but the ocean never comes
Since the operation I heard you're breathing just for one
Now everything is imaginary, especially what you love
You left another message said it's done,
It's done

When I hear beautiful music it's always from another time
Old friends I never visit, I remember what they're like
Standing on a doorstep full of nervous butterflies
Waiting to be asked to come inside
Just come inside

But I keep going out
I can't sleep next to a stranger when I'm coming down
It's 8 a.m. my heart is beating too loud
Too loud
Don't be so amazing or I'll miss you too much
I felt something that I had never touched

Everything gets smaller now the further that I go
Towards the mouth and the reunion of the Known and the Unknown
Consider yourself lucky if you think of it as home
You can move mountains with your misery if you don't
If you don't

It comes to me in fragments, even those still split in two
Under the leaves of that old Lime Tree I stood examining the fruit
Some were ripe and some were rotten, I felt nauseous with the truth
There will never be a time more opportune

So I just won't be late
The window closes, shock rolls over in a tidal wave
And all the color drains out of the frame
So pleased with a daydream that now living is no good
I took off my shoes and walked into the woods
I felt lost and found with every step I took

I heard you're scheming new pyramids
Another big idea to get you rich
Make a plan to love me sometime soon

You said you got a foot in the door
You buy and you sell, you buy some more
Make a plan to love me sometime soon

Life's too short
Death doesn't ask
It don't owe you that

Some things you lose
You don't get back
So just know what you have

And make a plan to love me sometime soon

First you want to ride off into the Sun
Then you want to shoot straight to the Moon
Make a plan to love me sometime soon

When you are young the world is a Ferris Wheel
I know we will grow old it is lovely, still
Make a plan to love me sometime soon

Life is too short
To be a fool
I don't owe you that

Do what you feel
Whatever is cool
But I just have to ask

Will you make a plan to love me?
Will you make a plan to love me?
Will you make a plan to love me sometime soon?

I traveled through the atmosphere as a wall of feedback climbed
The pegs were gold, the band was old, they played in half time
Now every dream gets whittled down just like every fool gets wise
‘Cause you'll never reap of any seed deprived of sunlight

So I've become the Middleman
The gray areas are mine
The in-between, the absentee
Is a beautiful disguise

So I keep my footlights shining bright just like I keep my exits wide
'Cause I never know when it's time to go, it's too crowded now inside
The dead can hide beneath the ground and the birds can always fly
But the rest of us do what we must in constant compromise

So I've become the Middleman
The gray areas are fine
The "I don't know," the "maybe so"
Is the only real
Is the only true
Is the only real reply

Well death may come invisible
or in a holy wall of fire
in the breath between the markers
on a black I-80 mile

from the madness of the governments
to the vengeance of the sea
well everything is eclipsed
by the shape of destiny

So love me now, hell is coming
yeah kiss my mouth, hell is here

little soldier, little insect
you know war it has no heart
it will kill you in the sunshine
or happily in the the dark

where kindness is a card game
or a bent up cigarette
in the trenches, in the hard rain
with a bullet and a bet

he says help me out, hell is coming
could you do it now? hell is here

See the sterile soil, poison sky
yellow water, final scraps of light
bringin' new tears

Well wake, baby, wake
but leave that blanket around you
there's nowhere else safe
I'm leaving this place
but there's nothing I'm planning to take
just you, just you

See the Soul Singer in the session band
Shredded to ribbons beneath a microphone stand
Felt the quickness of pity like a flash in a pan
For the Soul Singer in the session band

Now a red carpet bagger makes a Blackberry call
To the plastic piranhas in the city of salt
Wasted wheat paste campaign post no bills on the wall
You mean nothing to no one but that's nobody's fault

See the Soul Singer in the session band
Shredded to ribbons beneath a microphone stand
Felt the quickness of pity like a flash in a pan
For the Soul Singer in the session band

I had a lengthy discussion about The Power of Myth
With a post-modern author who didn't exist
In this fictitious world all reality twists
I was a hopeless romantic now I'm just turning tricks

Just like that Soul Singer in the session band
Shredded confetti beneath a microphone stand
Saw the Conflict of Interest slipping cash in the hand
Of the Soul Singer in the session band

His room is on fire since he painted it red
There are a stranger's silk sequins at the foot of the bed
He has been to weddings and funerals but he still never wept
Now sorrow is pleasure when you want it instead

Just like the Soul Singer in the session band
Wailed like an infant atop a white baby grand
We'll need every sand bag and every man
To save the Soul Singer in the session band

Headlights or Taillights it's a flip of a coin
I have been coming and going since the day I was born
And I followed the breadcrumbs but I never got home
I grew old in an instant now I am all on my own

Just like that Soul Singer in the session band
Shredded to nothing beneath the microphone stand
Saw the wave of the future through the crack of the dam
Drowned the Soul Singer in the session band
Bless the Soul singer in the session band

Your class, your caste, your country, sect,
your name or your tribe
There's people always dying trying to keep them alive
There's bodies decomposing in containers tonight
In an abandoned building where
Squatters made a mural of a Mexican girl
With fifteen cans of spray paint and a chemical swirl
She's standing in the ashes at the end of the world
Four winds blowing through her hair
But when great Satan's gone... the Whore of Babylon...
She just can't sustain the pressure where it's placed
She caves
The Bible's blind, the Torah's deaf, the Qur'an's mute
If you burned them all together you'd get close to the truth still
They're pouring over Sanskrit on the Ivy League moons
While shadows lengthen in the sun
Cast all the school and meditation built to soften the times
And hold us at the center while the spiral unwinds
It's knocking over fences crossing property lines
Four Winds, cry until it comes
And it's the Sum of Man slouching towards Bethlehem
A heart just can't contain all of that empty space
It breaks. It breaks. It breaks.
*
Well I went back by rented Cadillac and company jet
Like a newly orphaned refugee retracing my steps
All the way to Cassadaga to commune with the dead
They said, ""You'd better look alive""
And I was off to old Dakota where a genocide sleeps
In the Black Hills, the Badlands, the calloused East
I buried my ballast. I made my peace.
Heard Four Winds, leveling the pines
But when great Satan's gone... the Whore of Babylon...
She just can't remain with all that outer space
She breaks. She breaks. She caves. She caves.*
*반복

Well I'm changing all my strings
I'm gonna write another traveling song
About all the billion highways and the cities at the break of dawn
Well I guess the best that I can do now is pretend that I've done nothing wrong
And dream about a train that's going to take me back where I belong

Well now, the ocean speaks and spits and I can hear it from the interstate
I'm screaming at my brother on my cell phone he's far away
I'm saying nothing in the past or future ever will feel like today
Until we're parking in an alley
Just hoping that our shit is safe

So I go back and forth forever
All my thoughts they come in pairs
Oh I will, I won't, I doubt, I don't
I'm not surprised but I never feel quite prepared

Now I'm hunched over a typewriter
I guess you call that painting in a cave
And there's a word I can't remember
And a feeling I cannot escape
And now my ashtrays overflowing
I'm still staring at a clean white page
Oh and morning's at my window
She is sending me to bed again

Well I dream of dark on the horizon
I dream a desert where the dead lay down
I dream a prostituted child touching an old man in a fast food crown
I dreamt a ship was sinking
There was people screaming all around
And I awoke to my alarm clock
It was a pop song it was playing loud

So I must find my fears and face them
Or I'll cower like a dog
I'll kick and scream or kneel and bleed
I'll fight like hell to hide that I'm giving up

(spoken) (takes a sip of liquid and swallows) So there’s this woman, and she was um… (clears his throat) …on an airplane, and she’s flying to meet her fiance, sailing high above the ? (swallows) ? the largest ocean on planet earth, and she was seated next to this man who, er, you know, she had tried to start a conversation…and, only ? really the only thing she’d heard him say was ? just to order ? his…his Bloody Mary, and…and she’s sittin’ there, and she’s readin’ this…really arduous magazine article about…a third world country that…she couldn’t…even pronounce the - the name of, and…she’s feeling…very bored, and…very…despondent, ‘n…(takes another sip of liquid and swallows) And then, uh… (turns away from the microphone and presumably places the glass of liquid down on a surface behind him) …suddenly… (turns back to the microphone) …there was this huge mechanical failure and ? one of the ? the engines gave out… (swallows) …and they started just ffffalling ? an’…thirty thousand feet, the, uh…pilot’s on the… (inhales) …on the microphone and he’s ? (swallows) he’s saying um, ?I’m sorry, I’m sorry, oh my god, I’m…I’m sorry,? and apologizing and… (inhales) …and she looks at that man, and she - and she says… (begins playing the guitar) …she says wh - she says, "Where are we going??…and uh…an’ he looks at her…and he says, "We’re going to a party…it - it’s a birthday party…it’s your birthday party, happy birthday, darling. We love you very, very, very, very, very, very, very much.? And then um, he starts hummin’ this little tune, and… (inhales) …and, uh, it kinda goes like this, it’s kinda…one, two, one, two, three, four: (end of spoken portion)

We must talk in every telephone, get eaten off the web
We must rip out all the epilogues from the books that we have read
And in the face of every criminal strapped firmly to a chair
We must stare, we must stare, we must stare

We must take all of the medicines too expensive now to sell
Set fire to the preacher who is promising us hell
And in the ear of every anarchist that sleeps but doesn't dream
We must sing, we must sing, we must sing

And it'll go like this, all right:

While my mother waters plants my father loads his gun
He says, "Death will give us back to God,
Just like the setting sun
Is returned to the lonesome ocean"

And then they splashed into the deep blue sea
Oh, it was a wonderful splash

We must blend into the choir, sing a static with the whole
We must memorize nine numbers and deny we have a soul
And in this endless race for property and privilege to be won
We must run, we must run, we must run

We must hang up in the belfry where the bats and moonlight laugh
We must stare into a crystal ball and only see the past
And in the caverns of tomorrow with just our flashlights and our love
We must plunge, we must plunge, we must plunge

And then we'll get down there,
Way down to the very bottom of everything
And then we'll see it, oh, we'll see it!, we'll see it!, we’ll see it!

Oh, my morning's coming back,
The whole world’s waking up
All the city buses swimming past,
I'm happy just because
I found out I am really no one

This is the first day of my life
Swear I was born right in the doorway
I went out in the rain, suddenly everything changed
They're spreading blankets on the beach

Yours was the first face that I saw
I think I was blind before I met you
I don't know where I am, I don't know where I've been
But I know where I want to go

So I thought I'd let you know
That these things take forever, I especially am slow
But I realized how I need you
And I wondered if I could come home

I remember the time you drove all night
Just to meet me in the morning
And I thought it was strange, you said everything changed
You felt as if you just woke up

And you said, this is the first day of my life
Glad I didn't die before I met you
Now I don't care, I could go anywhere with you
And I'd probably be happy

So if you wanna be with me
With these things there's no telling, we'll just have to wait and see
But I'd rather be working for a paycheck
Than waiting to win the lottery

Besides maybe this time it's different
I mean, I really think you like me

If you walk away I walk away
first tell me which road you will take
I don't want to risk our paths crossing someday
so you walk that way I'll walk this way

and the future hangs over our heads
and it moves with each current event
until it falls all around like a cold steady rain
just stay in when it's lookin' this way

and the moon's laying low in the sky
forcing everything metal to shine
and the sidewalk holds diamonds like a jewelry store case
they argue "walk this way," "no walk this way"

and laura's asleep in my bed
as I'm leaving she wakes up and says
"I dreamed you were carried away on the crest of a wave
baby don't go away, come here"

and there's kids playing guns in the street
and one's pointing his tree branch at me
So I put my hands up I say:
"Enough is enough,
If you walk away I walk away."
(and he shot me dead)

I found a liquid cure
for my landlocked blues
it will pass away
like a slow parade
it's leaving but I don't know how soon

and the world's got me dizzy again
you'd think after 22 years I'd be used to the spin
and it only feels worse when I stay in one place
so I'm always pacing around or walking away
I keep drinking the ink from my pen
and I'm balancing history books up on my head
but it all boils down to one quoteable phrase
"If you love something give it away"
A good woman will pick you apart
a box full of suggestions for your possible heart
But you may be offended, and you may be afraid
but don't walk away, don't walk away

We made love on the living room floor
with the noise in the background from a televised war
And in the deafening pleasure I thought I heard someone say
"If we walk away,they'll walk away"
But greed is a bottomless pit
And our freedom's a joke we're just taking a piss
And the whole world must watch the sad comic display
If you're still free start runnin' away
'cause we're comin' for ya!

I've grown tired of holding this pose
I feel more like a stranger each time I come home
So I'm making a deal with the devils of fame
Sayin' let me walk away, please
You'll be free child once you have died
from the shackles of language and measurable time
And then we can trade places, play musical graves
till then walk away walk away walk away walk away
So I'm up at dawn, putting on my shoes
I just want to make a clean escape
I'm leaving but I don't know where to
I know I'm leaving but I don't know where to

I know that it is freezing but I think we have to walk
I keep waving at the taxis, they keep turning their lights off
But Julie knows a party at some actor's westside loft
Supplies are endless in the evening, by the morning they'll be gone

When everything is lonely, I can be my own best friend
I get a coffee and the paper, have my own conversations
With the sidewalk and the pigeons and my window reflection
The mask I polish in the evening, by the morning looks like shit

And I know you have a heavy heart
I can feel it when we kiss
So many men stronger than me
have thrown their backs out trying to lift it
But me I'm not a gamble, you can count on me to split
The love I sell you in the evening, by the morning won't exist

You're looking skinny like a model with your eyes all painted black
Just keep going to the bathroom, always say you'll be right back
Well it takes one to know one, kid I think you got it bad
What's so easy in the evening, by the morning's such a drag

I've got a flask inside my pocket, we can share it on the train
And if you promise to stay conscious, I will try and do the same
Well, we might die from medication, but we sure killed all the pain
But what was normal in the evening by the morning seems insane

And I'm not sure what the trouble was
that started all of this
The reasons all have run away
But the feeling never did
It's not something I would recommend
But it is one way to live
Cause what is simple in the moonlight, by the morning never is
It was so simple in the moonlight, now it's so complicated
It was so simple in the moonlight
So simple in the moonlight
So simple in the moonlight

Gray light new day, leaks through the window
an old soul song comes on the alarm clock radio
we walked the 40 blocks to the middle
of the place we heard that everything would be
and there were barricades to keep us off the street
but the crowd kept pushing forward
till they swallowed the police
yea they went wild

they went wild
yea they went wild
yea they went wild

We left before the dust had time to settle
and all the broken glass swept off the avenue
all the way home held your camera like a bible
wishing so bad that it held some kind of truth
and i stood nervous next to you, in the dark room
you dropped the paper in the water,
and it all begins to bloom

yea they go wild
they go wild
yea they go wild
yea they go wild

just when i get so lonesome, i cant speak
i see some flowers on a hillside
like a wall of new tv's
yea they go wild
yea they go wild
yea they go wild
yea they go wild
yea they go wild
yea they go wild
yea they go wild

Poison oak some boyhood bravery
when a telephone was a tin can on a string
and I fell asleep with you still talking to me
you said you weren't afraid to die

in Polaroids you were dressed in woman's clothes
were you made ashamed? Why'd you lock them in the drawer?
well, I don't think that I ever loved you more

than when you turned away
when you slammed the door
when you stole the car
and drove towards Mexico
and you wrote bad checks
just to fill your arm
I was young enough
I still believed in war

well, let the poets cry themselves to sleep
and all their tearful words will turn back into steam

but me I'm a single cell on a serpent's tongue
there's a muddy field where a garden was
and I'm glad you got away
but I'm still stuck out here
my clothes are soaking wet
from your brother's tears

and I never thought this life was possible
you're the yellow bird that I've been waiting for

the end of paralysis, I was a statuette
now I'm drunk as hell on a piano bench
and when I press the keys it all gets reversed
the sound of loneliness makes me happier

The sun came up with no conclusions
Flowers sleeping in their beds.
The city's cemetery's humming
I'm wide awake it's morning.
I have my drugs, I have my woman
They keep away my loneliness
My parents they have their religion
but sleep in separate houses.

I read the body count out of the paper
and now it's written all over my face.
No one ever plans to sleep out in the gutter,
sometimes that's just the most comfortable place.

So, I'm drinking breathing, writing singing
every day I'm on the clock.
My mind races with all my longings
But can't keep up with what I've got.
So I hope I don't sound too ungrateful,
what history gave modern men
a telephone to talk to strangers
machine guns and a camera lens.

So, when you're asked to fight a war that's over nothing
It's best to join the side that's gonna win.
And no one's sure how all of this got started,
but we're gonna make 'em god damn certain how it's gonna end.
Oh yeah we will, oh yeah we will!

Well I could have been a famous singer,
if I had someone else's voice.
But failure's always sounded better
let's fuck it up boys, make some noise!

The sun came up with no conclusions
Flowers sleeping in their beds.
The city's cemetery's humming
I'm wide awake it's morning.

You were born inside of a raindrop,
and I watched you falling
to your death

And the sun,
well, she could not save you
She's falling down too
Now the streets are wet

Body of water, toxic and timeless,
Atlantic ocean, New York skyline
I always get lost when I leave the village,
so I couldn't come meet you in Brooklyn last night

But I sing glory from my lowest,
and I will say peace to the people I meet
while the world waits for an explosion,
that instant of light that wipes the slate clean

So don't be fooled.
No, don't get lied to
Love was always cruel

And don't act strange, don't be a stranger
It happened to me; now, it's happening to you
But if you take that train under water,
then we could talk it through

Well, if I could tame all of my desires
Wait out the weather that howls in my brain
Because it seems that it's always changing
The wind's indecision, the sorrowful rain

Yeah, I was a postcard
I was a record
I was a camera, until I went blind
and now I'm riding all over this island
looking for something to open my eyes

But I still sing glory
from a high-rise
And I will say thanks if you're pouring my drinks
while the world waits for an explosion:
that moment in time when we'll be set free

Well, don't stay mad
Just let some time pass
And in the morning you'll wake feeling new

And if I don't come back,
I mean, if I get sidetracked,
It's only 'cause I wanted to
I'm keeping up with the moon on an all-night avenue

Goddamn
You make me cry

If you hate the taste of wine
why do you drink it till you're blind?
And if you swear that there's no truth and who cares
how come you say it like you're right?
Why are you scared to dream of god
when it's salvation that you want?
You see stars that clear have been dead for years
but the idea just lives on
In our wheels that roll around
as we move over the ground
And all day it seems we've been in between
the past and future town

We are nowhere and it's now
We are nowhere and it's now
and like a ten minute dream in the passenger's seat
while the world was flying by
I haven't been gone very long
but it feels like a life time

I've been sleeping so strange at night
Side effects they don't advertise
I've been sleeping so strange
with a head full of pesticide

I've got no plans in all this time
I feel too restless to unwind
I'm always lost in thought
as I walk a block to my favorite neon sign
where the waitress looks concerned
but she never says a word
just turns the juke box on
and we hum along and I smile back at her
And my friend comes after work
When the features start to blur
She says these bars are filled with things that kill
by now you probably should have learned

Did you forget that yellow bird?
How could you forget your yellow bird?
She took a small silver wreath and pinned it on to me
she said this one will bring you love
and I don't know if it's true but I keep it for good luck

You can make a plan
Carve it into stone
Like a feather falling
That is still unknown
Until the clock speaks up
Says it's time to go
You can choose the high
Or the lower road

You might clench your fist
You might fork your tongue
As you curse or praise
All the things you've done
And the faders move
And the music dies
As we pass over
On the arc of time

So you'll nurse your love
like a wounded dove
in the covered cage of night
Every star is crossed
by phrenetic thoughts
They separate and then collide

And they twist like sheets
‘til you fall asleep
and they finally unwind
It's a black balloon
It's a dream you'll soon deny

I hear if you make friends
With Jesus Christ
You'll get right up
From that chalk outline
And then you'll get dolled up
And you'll dress in white
All to take your place
In his chorus line

And then in you'll come
With those marching drums
In a saintly compromise
No more whiskey slurs
No more blonde hair girls
For your whole eternal life

And you'll do the dance
That was choreographed
At the very dawn of time
Singing "I told you son,
The day would come,
You would die, you die, you die, you die…
You would die, you die, you die, you die…
You would die, you die, you die, you die…
You would die, you die, you die

To the deepest part
Of the human heart
The fear of death expands
‘til we crack the code
we've always known
But could never understand

On a circuit board
We'll soon be born
Again, again, again, again…
And again, again, again, again…
And again, again, again, again…
And again, again, again

A house of cards
A supple heart
Is not a place to dwell

Now you have your cake
Don’t hesitate
Come on just do it,
Come on just do it

Put it in your mouth
There is only now
Tomorrow has to wait

But know there’s no backing out
This is gonna be reality
You can never dream it down

I have No way
Of telling
The two apart

Well I made amends
In the general sense
But the devil’s in the details

And I know the cause
And I want to stop
But I can’t do it,
I just can’t do it

There was love I meant
There were accidents
So tell me which is which

‘Cus I just can’t work it out
But for memory and clarity
We had better write it down

I have no way
Of knowing the truth
With time dissolves

I put the past into the ground
I saw the future as a cloud
If theres still time to turn around
Im going to

Its just one day I fell asleep
And all day all night I dreamed
I am the first one I deceive
If I can make myself believe
The rest is easy...

I heard you fell into a rabbit hole
Covered yourself up in snow
Baby, tell me where'd you go
For days and days
Did they make you stay up all night?
Did they paint your face that pasty white?
You're thirsty but your appetite
Is chased away

The sun turns us to stone
It's a cloudy day
But we still can't go home
Open our back cellar door
Till we see the moon
We're invisible

No one ever takes the garbage out
A new kid gets dare to touch the house
He runs back only to announce
There's no one home

Does he paint the foil with a flame
Smear the soda, taste butane
For every fear that can't be named
To calm you down

Your heart starts skipping steps
So your farther gone
Then you might expect
If your thoughts should turn to death
Got to stomp them out
Like a cigarette

Did it all get real, I guess it's real enough
They got refrigerators full of blood
Another century spent pointing guns
At anything that moves
Sometimes I worry that I've lost the plot
My twitching muscles tease my flippent thoughts
I never really dreamed of heaven much
Until we put him in the ground

But it's all I'm doing now
Listening for patterns in the sound
Of an endless static sea
But once the satellite's deceased
It blows like garbage through the streets
Of the night sky to infinity

But don't you weep (don't you weep for them)
Don't you weep (don't you weep)
There is nothing as lucky
Honey, don't you weep (don't you weep for them)
Don't you weep (don't you weep)
There is nothing as lucky, as easy, or free

Don't be a criminal in this police state
You better shop and eat and procreate
You got vacation days then you might escape
To a condo on the coast

I set my watch to the atomic clock
I hear the crowd count down til the bomb gets dropped
I always figured there'd be time enough
I never let it get me down

But I can't help it now
Looking for faces in the clouds
I got some friends I barely see
But we're all planning to meet
We'll lay in bags as dead as leaves
All together for eternity

But don't you weep (don't you weep for them)
Don't you weep (don't you weep)
There is no one as lucky
Honey, don't you weep (don't you weep for them)
Don't you weep (don't you weep)
There is nothing as lucky, as easy, or free
Or free, or free, or free
There's nothing, there's nothing, there's nothing...

It was Don DeLillo, whiskey neat
And a blinking midnight clock
Speakers on a TV stand
Just a turntable to watch
And the smoke came out our mouths
On all those hooded sweatshirt walks
We were a stroke of luck
We were a gold mine, they gutted us

And from the sidelines you see me run
Until I'm out of breath
Living the good life, I left for dead
The sorrowful Midwest
Well I did my best...
To keep my head

It was grass stain jeans and incompletes
And a girl from class to touch
But you think about yourself too much
And you ruin who you love
Well all these claims at consciousness
My stray dog freedom
Let's have a nice clean cut
Like a bag we buy and divy up

And from the sidelines, I see you run
Until you're out of breath
And all those white lines that sped us up
We hurried to our death
Well I lagged behind...
So you got ahead

I'm staring out into that vacuum again
From the back porch of my mind
The only thing that's alive
I'm all there is

And I start attacking my vodka, stab the ice with my straw
My eyes have turned red as stoplights, you seem ready to walk
You know I'll call you eventually, when I wanna talk
'Til then you're invisible

'Cause there's a switch that gets hit and it all stops making sense
And in the middle of drinks, maybe the fifth or the sixth
I'm completely alone at a table of friends
I feel nothing for them. I feel nothing, nothing

Well, I need a break from the city again
I think I'll ship myself back west
I got a friend there, she says, "hey, any time."
Unless that offers expired, I have been less than frequent
She's under no obligation to indulge every whim
And I'm so ungrateful, I take, she gives and forgives
And I keep forgetting it

And each morning she wakes with a dream to describe
Something lovely that bloomed in her beautiful mind
I said "I'll trade you one for two nightmares of mine
I have some where I die, I have some where we all die."

I'm thinking of quitting drinking again
I know I said that a couple times
And I'm always changing my mind, well, I guess I am
But there's this burn in my stomach and there's this pain in my side
And when I kneel at the toilet
And the mornings clean light pours in through the window
Sometimes I pray I don't die
I'm a goddamn hypocrite

But the night rolls around and it all starts making sense
There is no right way or wrong way, you just have to live
And so I do what I do and at least I exist
What could mean more than this?
What would mean more?
Mean more?

Some plans were made and rice was thrown
A house was built, a baby born
How time can move both fast and slow
Amazes me

And so I raise my glass to symmetry
To the second hand and its accuracy
To the actual size of everything
The desert is the sand
You can't hold it in your hand
It won't bow to your demands
There's no difference you can make
There's no difference you can make
And if it seems like an accident
A collage of senselessness
You aren't looking hard enough
I wasn't looking hard enough

An argument for consciousness
The instinct of the blind insect
Who makes love to the flower bed
And dies in the first freeze
Oh I want to learn such simple things
No politics, no history
Till what I want and what I need
Can finally be the same

I just got myself to blame
Leave everything up to fate
When there's choices I could make
When there's choices I could make
Yeah, my heart needs a polygraph
Always so eager to pack my bags
When I really wanna stay
When I really wanna stay

When I wanna stay (x4)

The arc of time, the stench of sex
The innocence you can't protect
Each quarter note, each marble step
Walk up and down that lonely treble clef
Each wanting the next one
Each wanting the next one to arrive
Each wanting the next one
Each wanting the next one to arrive

An argument for consciousness
The instinct of the blind insect
Who never thinks not to accept its fate
That's faith, there's happiness in death
You give to the next one
You give to the next on down the line
You give to the next one
You get to the next on down the line

The levity of longing that
Distills each dream inside my head
By morning watered down again
On silver stars I wish and wish and wish

Move on to the next one
Move on to the next one down the line
Move on to the next one
Move on to the next one down the line

You get to the next one
You get to the next on down the line
You get to the next one
You get to the next on down the line

John A. Hobson was a good man
He used to loan me books and mic stands
He even got me a subscription
To the Socialist Review
Listening to records in his basement
Old folk songs about the government
"It's love of money, not the market"
He said, "these fuckers push on you"

And freedom yells, it don't cry
Whatever sells will decide
But there's no hell when you die
So don't look so worried

He got a night life, lost his day job
Pushing papers, swinging pendulums
Anything to serve a function
Or to occupy some time

You gotta earn this living somehow
You're good as dead without a bank account
But it's funny how alive he felt down
In that unemployment line

With all that trash at his feet
The pools of piss in the street
All of that filthy empathy
For the way we're feeling

The billboards shade
The flags they wave
The anthem was playing loud
The baseball game was letting out

And all at once
he saw the dust
And heard every tiny sound
Got in his truck and turned around

Drove out through the crowd and the cops
Drove out past that center mall
Drove out past that sickening sprawl
Out past that fenced in crawl

And maybe he lost control
Fucking with the radio
But I bet the stars seemed so close
At the end
At the end
At the end

I wanna be the surgeon that cuts you open
That fixes all of life's mistakes
I wanna be the house that you were raised in
The only place that you feel safe

I wanna be a shower in the morning
That wakes you up and makes you clean
I know I'm just the weather againt your window
As you sleep through a winter's dream

Someones churning the earth
Someone's stirring the sky
Every color at once in a column of lights
Bacteria breeds on a microscope slide
The worm in my heart's the apple of your eye

Don't adore what is impossible
We have built this ship in a wine bottle
But if you knew how it worked
We'd have to grow old

Someone's eating at you, wakes you up in the night
If you're digging the past, who knows what you'll find
Read the newspaper print off the microfiche slide
And you're holding your breath for the rest of your life

Don't you love what is intangible
I have built this ship in a wine bottle
But if you knew who I was...
You would never grow old

First with your hands and then with your mouth.
A downpour of sweat, damp cotton clouds.
I was a fool, you were my friend. We made it happen.

You took off your clothes, left on the light. You stood there so brave. You used to be shy. Each feature improved, each movement refined and eyes like a showroom.

Now they are spreading out the blankets on the beach.
That weatherman is a liar.
He said it would be raining but it is clear and blue as far as I can see.

Left by the lamp, right next to the bed, on a cartoon cat pat you scratched with a pen, "Everything is as it has always been. This never happened.
Don't take it so bad it is nothing you did. It's just once something dies you can't make it live. You are a beautiful boy.
You're a sweet little kid but I am a woman." So I laid back down and wrapped myself up in the sheet.
And I must have looked like a ghost because something frightened me and since then I've been so good at vanishing.

Now I do as I please and lie through my teeth. Someone might get hurt but it won't be me.
I should probably feel cheap but I just feel free and a little bit empty.
No it isn't so hard to get close to me. There will be no arguments.
We will always agree.
And I will try and be kind when I ask you to leave. We will both take it easy.
But if you stay too long inside my memory, I will trap you in a song tied to a melody and I will keep you there so you can't bother me

death

data entry

ant hill law

encoded arc our common cause

drink liquid clocks 'til I see God

crystal display

can't turn it off

shh...shh...shhhh

don't talk

don't talk

Sitting around, no work today.
Try pacing to keep awake.
Laying around, no school today.
Just drink until the clock has circled all the way.

It's late afternoon, as you walk through the rooms
of a house that is quiet
except for unanswered telephones.
You stand near the sink,
you mix up a drink.
You think you don't want to pass out
where your roommates could find you again.
Stumble 'round the neighboorhod, nothing to do.
You're always looking for something
to sniff smoke or swallow.
Calling over next door, see what they've got.
But you would settle for anything
that would make your brain slow down or
stop this circle of thoughts you chase
before they catch back up with you.
And your parents notice your thinning face,
All the weight you've lost,
All the weight youre losing.
You said "I'm done feeling like a skeleton,
no more sleep walking dead."
You're going to wake from this coma.
You're going to crawl from this bed you've made.
Stop counting on the camera
that hangs around your neck,
cause it will never remember what you choose to forget.

And you try to find one source of light,
try to name one thing you like.
You used to have such a longer list,
And light, you never had to look for it.

But now it's so easy, it's so easy to--
it's so easy, it's so easy to
second guess everything you do
until all you want, all you want is to
finish this half empty glass
before the ice all melts away.
This feeling always used to pass,
seems like it's every day
seems like it's every night now.

If you could change your days, arranging them in some sweet new sequence
Like any new arrangement's gonna make a difference
Cause it's the moment that you're living in and not the one that follows
That makes this mess you're cleaning in your head
Time still drags you forward, though you keep resisting
You know it's what you leave behind, you'll soon start missing
And the people you once counted on now say it's all depending
On how you act and how you treat yourself
And that's not very well
So baby, when I call for you
I want you to come
Explain yourself to everyone
You nod in an acknowledgement of your frequent mood swings
Yeah, what good's an acknowledgement, it still don't change things
We've tried all forms of encouragement, but it's still no better
You just can't seem to fake or force a smile
Not even a little one
But baby, when I call to you
I want you to come
And lay it out for everyone
Exactly how it was before any of this happened
And why you can't leave it behind
Now don't just, don't just sit there when I call to you
I told you to come and lay it out for
Don't feel awkward
Lay it out for everyone

lately i've been wishing i had one desire
something that would make me never want another
something that would make it so that nothing matters
all would be clear thenbut i guess i'll have to settle for a few brief moments
and watch it all dissolve into a single second
and try to write it down into a perfect sonnet
or one foolish linebecause that's all that you'll get
so you'll have to accept
you are here
then you're gonei believe that lovers should be tied togehter
and thrown into the ocean in the worst of weather
left there to drown
left there to drown
in their innocencebut as for me i'm coming to the final chapter
i read all of the pages and there's still no answer
only all that was before i know must soon come after
that is the only way it can beso i stand in the sun
and i breath with my lungs
trying to spare me the weight of the truthsaying everything you've ever seen was just a mirror
you've spent your whole life sweating in an endless fever
now you're laying in a bathtub full of freezing water
wishing you were a ghostbut once you knew a girl and you named her lover
and danced with her in kitchens through the greenest summers
but autumn came, she disappeared, you can't remember
where she said she was going tobut you know that she's gone
because she left you a song
that you don't wanna singsinging i believe that lovers should be chained together
and thrown into a fire with their songs and letters
and left there to burn
left there to burn
in their arrogancebut as for me i'm coming to my final failure
i've killed myself with changes trying to make things better
but i still ended up becoming something other
that what i had planned to beallright!now i believe that lovers should be draped in flowers
and laid entwined together on a bed of clover
and left there to sleep
left there to dream
of their happiness

In the morning when you throw up water
And your skin, it turns a pale, pale yellow
Well, every day you lose more color
Do you think that someone paints your mirror?
Do you think that someone paints your mirror?

And you think that things sound different
At the time when you speak
There are visions much clearer
Than these blurs that you see

And like Neely O'Hara
You swallow your sleep
And you wake up in the morning to find out
You are not, you are not who, you are not who
You used to be

You don't recognize behavior
Or the spelling of your name
And the shape that's in the mirror
You swear it's not (you swear its not the same) the same

And like Neely O'Hara
You swallow your sleep
And you really can't remember
But you know you are not
Think you are not
No, you are not
who you used to be
Who you used to be, who you used to be
Did you used to be, did you used to be
(No you are not, no you are not)
Who you used to be, who you used to be

There's a car parked where the block begins
And these people singing praises
Say it's all because of him
And there's a bird perched on a frayed wet wire
And his voice sings out for a lover
But it's covered by the choir
Of voices reaching way beyond the rafters
With devotion they perform these sacred tasks
They cross themselves and offer up their checkbooks
Slight suffering is not too much to ask
Besides, we all are making money
And we're all fucking alone
And we don't know what we're doing
Maybe just buying us some hope
Because we know that we are lonely
Well, yeah, lonely that's for sure
And the older ones are coughing
Yeah, the older ones they're dying
Maybe we're all dying
I pass a graveyard on my way to work
Today I saw two dozen white roses
on a fresh new mound of dirt
And I wondered about the occupant
When the darkness finally swallowed him
was he calm and content?
Or was he sweating in a struggle to keep breathing
Ripping apart the sheets that dressed his bed
Crying out loud for someone to help him
Then collapsing on his back all pale and dead
Maybe it's me who's this unstable
Always obsessed about the end
Why can't I let what happens happen
And just enjoy the time I spend?
Oh, how I wish it was that easy
But when there is no point to anything
You know it gets a bit confusing
Why it is that I keep going
Why is it that we keep going?

I know that it is freezing but I think we have to walk
I keep waving at the taxis, they keep turning their lights off
But Julie knows a party at some actor's westside loft
Supplies are endless in the evening, by the morning they'll be gone

When everything is lonely, I can be my own best friend
I get a coffee and the paper, have my own conversations
With the sidewalk and the pigeons and my window reflection
The mask I polish in the evening, by the morning looks like shit

And I know you have a heavy heart
I can feel it when we kiss
So many men stronger than me
have thrown their backs out trying to lift it
But me I'm not a gamble, you can count on me to split
The love I sell you in the evening, by the morning won't exist

You're looking skinny like a model with your eyes all painted black
Just keep going to the bathroom, always say you'll be right back
Well it takes one to know one, kid I think you got it bad
What's so easy in the evening, by the morning's such a drag

I've got a flask inside my pocket, we can share it on the train
And if you promise to stay conscious, I will try and do the same
Well, we might die from medication, but we sure killed all the pain
But what was normal in the evening by the morning seems insane

And I'm not sure what the trouble was
that started all of this
The reasons all have run away
But the feeling never did
It's not something I would recommend
But it is one way to live
Cause what is simple in the moonlight, by the morning never is
It was so simple in the moonlight, now it's so complicated
It was so simple in the moonlight
So simple in the moonlight
So simple in the moonlight

I get my whiskey from a well, except on holidays then it's on the top shelf. But tonite I don't mind if I spend a little more because you are a tolerant woman and the world is at war. I know you witnessed my decline. You used to push back the darkness like a floodlight, but tonight that is a secret like the soul of a whore that if you want to have fun you will just have to ignore. Now let my troubles solve themselves. I used to get involved but I'm just no help, but tonight let's pretend that we are just like we were. Let me stay until the morning I will sleep on the floor. And we can talk in circles, no dollar figures, just what is owed or paid. And you can make predictions I know you see the future and I agree. We agree tonight is not happening.

When I got dry as a desert I got mean. I was as lonely and empty as a canteen. With no anesthetic you are bound to be sore but tonight I and drinking all peaceful and warm. And just when I got fed up with the gray sky. The sun came out of nowhere like a bar fight. And it knocke out the wind and it bruised me with light. And I felt grateful for living just like I feel tonight. I know that you feel safer in a group where you could be anyone or they could be you. But tonight we'll take risks that you can afford. You still have bars on your window and a hole in your door. So we can talk in circles around a dirty mirror. Night trickles down our throats. And we could make a timeline to last our whole lives but we don't know. No one knows what is further up the road. Just wait and see. Just wait and see. All in time. All in time.

This is the first day of my life
Swear I was born right in the doorway
I went out in the rain, suddenly everything changed
They're spreading blankets on the beach

Yours was the first face that I saw
I think I was blind before I met you
I don't know where I am, I don't know where I've been
But I know where I want to go

So I thought I'd let you know
That these things take forever, I especially am slow
But I realized how I need you
And I wondered if I could come home

I remember the time you drove all night
Just to meet me in the morning
And I thought it was strange, you said everything changed
You felt as if you just woke up

And you said, this is the first day of my life
Glad I didn't die before I met you
Now I don't care, I could go anywhere with you
And I'd probably be happy

So if you wanna be with me
With these things there's no telling, we'll just have to wait and see
But I'd rather be working for a paycheck
Than waiting to win the lottery

Besides maybe this time it's different
I mean, I really think you like me