The Airborne Toxic Event

We were born without time,
Nameless in the arms,
Of a mother, a father and God.

When the world would wait for us,
A thousand years in the crush,
Of our eyes, fearless and awed.

Quietly we'd fade into sleep,
With nothing on our minds.

Then we longed to be loved,
In the rush we'd become,
Some things we thought we'd never be.

We were surprised by how hard,
Left wary and scarred,
From the nights spent feeling incomplete.

And all those evenings swearing at the sky,
Wishing for more time.
All the promises we broke when we tried,
Were just wasting all our time.

We grow old all at once,
And it comes like a punch
In the gut, in the back, in the face.

When it seems someone's lied,
And our parents have died,
And we hold onto each other in their place.

And I feel the water rising around us.
Maybe that's OK.
Yeah, I feel the world changing all at once.
I guess it'll be OK.

And we all had one hope there was someone looking down,
To return our bodies to each other and the ground.

All of these grateful looks, all these grateful eyes, all these furious stares, these fretful sighs,
Promising everything to everyone, “We’ll be back soon, you’re my favorite one.”

“I’ll keep it quiet,” “I’ll hold you dear,” the whispering fills the ear,
“Tell me you’ll stay, we would have such fun,” and the lie you don’t need anyone.

The screams, the wails, and the calls, the headiness of the fall.
Ten thousand miles from where we began, I fell asleep with a picture in hand.

It was all for a woman.

You say that you’re grateful for the time alone, two years away, “No, I don’t miss home,”
Someone asks you if you ever think of her, and you smile politely and you demure.

But then all at once your head starts to swim, you can feel her breath on your skin,
You find that you stare at the same spot for days, she’s above you, below you in waves.

And you’re shivering cold, like you’re just ten years old, she’s lying asleep in your bed,
You’re standing beside her, the light from inside her, filling up the darkness in your head.

It was all for a woman.

And you’ve drowned in the teasing. You’ve forgotten the reason, the muse inspires the art,
You’d give anything for her to say them once more, the words you believed at the start.

Ten thousand miles from where it began, falling asleep with her picture in hand.
It was all for the look in her eye.

For the promise and the lie
Of a woman.

I can only say these things to you while you’re sleeping. I hear the hum from the wires,
the sounds of the morning creeping. I lie awake and pretend you can hear me.

You tell me that you’re scared that you’re turning into your mother. I feel myself turning into my
father. We could lie to each other like they do and say we’re so happy. It’s easy when you’re
young and you still want it so badly.

I turn over again and I feel my heart beating faster
And I stare out the window and I think that I might scream

I can tell you that you’re all I’ve ever wanted, Dear. I can utter every word you’ve ever hoped
to hear. I shudder when I think that I might not be here forever, forever, forever.

And the time we were alone at the station
And you were so quiet like a child and you told me you want to be taken
I never thought you’d be the kind of girl who would do that
And you suddenly seem like some faceless thing in my grasp
I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t find it exciting
Your eyes all wet and your face so warm and inviting

I can tell that you’re all I’ve ever wanted, Dear. I can utter every word you’ve ever hoped to hear.
I shudder when I think I might not be here forever, forever, forever.

I’d tell you that I’d always love you like the virgin bride you were that night
But I’d be lying
Love is defying

And all I can think is that it must be a kind of rebellion -- to arm your fears like soldiers and slay them.

I can tell you that you’re all I ever wanted, Dear, through the dim of your breathing while you’re
sleeping here, you wake and you ask me if I’m going to be here forever, forever, forever. Your face so twisted and
your eyes alight, I want to tell you I can save you when you cry at night, but I'll be lying.

Love is defying.

Won't you stop crying?

On the night that we met, you said that you wanted something more from me.
And it was all that I could do. I remember your face, like a child, the way
that you blushed and the way that you smiled.

And now it’s all that I can do. And I wake up feeling new.
There’s so much more I never knew.

So I think of all the years spent alone, it’s like you’re searching for something to
make you feel whole. Like you’re half of something else.
Just a fraction of yourself.

Don’t take it so hard. We did what we could. There were no easy answers to be understood.
It was all that we could do. We’re the only ones who knew. And all I think about is you.

The way that you screamed.
The way that you cried.
The way that you’d wipe your eyes and fall against my side.

The way that you told me I was wrong.

And the way that you’d sing when you’d hear a song.

And the way that you answered when you knew I was gone.

Now I know that I’m blind and that you’re all I see and yeah I know it’s not clever,
but I just want you with me.

I’m only half of something else.

I never knew my mother, but I can’t say it was so bad. She was still a girl of 17 on the
night she met my dad. He was just six months out of Chino trying his hardest to stay clean.
When they’d sing like doves sleeping with broken wings in a bed made for a king.
It didn’t mean a thing.

It was a shotgun forest wedding, but they forgot to bring the guns. They were too busy
counting promises to the children not yet born. No one could afford the ride, so they just
hitched up the 101. And they’d sing like doves dancing with broken wings, with a view fit for
a king. It didn’t mean a thing.

There was a loneliness they would confess like the world had just gone bad, I guess. So
they’d hold hands looking to the eyes of God. And they’d say, “Tell me why you’d hide from
us? Why you’d fill the world with wickedness? Why’d you spare us from your grace,
but not the rod?”

Now my dad says, “F**k the details, just keep your head down hard. You got to find yourself
alone before you’ll find the eyes of God. You may be broke and scared and mad and tear at
the flesh of your heart-strings. But you were born to be a peasant not a king. So just stop
acting like you’re running from something. You’re gonna leave the way you came without a
thing, with your heart tied your mind tied to a string. You just sing and you sing and you sing.”

“It doesn’t mean a thing.”

I've been in a daze.
It seems like days that I've been waiting for this dream to pass.
It goes so fast.
It seems nothing lasts.
I think I've lost something.

Stuck here with these people wide awake,
The crush of bodies in one space.
I feel your hot breath on my tongue.
I wonder where you've gone.

And the ever-turning spinning wheel of people, places, lies.
I feel the restless beat of the sleepless night to come.

I just want to be numb.
I just want to be numb.

Hopeless these three years like smoking gears,
I go from place to place just aimlessly and half asleep,
Like I've fallen alone in some endless breach.

I don't know where I am.
I don't know what I've done.
I just go over it and over it again and again and again.
I can't sleep at night.
I can't breathe.
But if I drink tonight, I'll get you off my mind.

And the ever-present pit I feel,
I'm turning on some spinning wheel.
The faces and the scenes I see,
And none of it seems real to me.
Just the bleary haze of the morning still to come.

I just want to be numb.
I just want to be numb.
I just want to be numb.
I just want to be numb.

I just want to be numb.

It was an old song from Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me that she sang.
It was an old line I’d kept with me when she rang. You’re such a strange girl.

It’s all been erased. Everyone is telling me. It’s slightly deranged. Everyone is telling me.
We traded blindness for wisdom and some lines around our eyes. And you just act like,
it was a fact of life and didn’t come as a surprise.You’re such a strange girl.

And no, you can’t ever go home. Everything has changed, and the people are gone.
So you close your eyes, you try to summon the song. And you feel your life falling under you
like a slide. It was an old song. I once knew every note and every line. It was a long night when
I carried you, and you carried me for a time.You’re such a strange girl.

It’s all been erased. Everyone is telling me. It’s slightly deranged. Everyone is telling me.
I dreamt of your face and what the song was telling me.
But time has made it all obscene and trapped us in our dreams.

The other day when we were walking by the graveyard near the house you asked me if I thought
Would ever die.
And if life and love both fade so predictably
We've made ourselves a kind of predictable lie.
So I pictured us like corpses
Lying side by side in pieces in some dark and lonely plot under a bough.
We looked so silly there, all decomposed, half turned to dust in tattered clothes.
Though we probably look just as silly now.

Bye, bye, bye, to all this dog-eared innocence.
I can't pretend that I can tell you what is going to happen next or how to be.
But you have no idea about me.
Do you?

It left me to wonder if people ever know each other
Or just stumble around like strangers in the dark.
Because sometimes you seem so strange to me
I must seem strange to you.
We're like two actors playing two parts.
Did you memorize your lines? 'Cause I did.
Here's the part where I get so mad.
I tell you that I can't forget the past.
You get so quiet now and you seem somehow like a lost and lonely child and you just hope that the moment won't last.

Bye, bye, bye, to all this dog-eared innocence.
I can't pretend that I can tell you what is going to happen next or how to be.
But you have no idea about me.
Yeah, you have no idea about me.
Do you?

Still, there's always a way around.
There's something tying our feet to the ground.
A moment passed, we hear how it sounds.
And it seems a little less profound.
Like we're all going the same way down.
Yeah, we're all going the same way down.
I'm just trying to write it all down.

'Cause I write songs, and you write letters.
We are tied like two in tethers
And we talk and read and laugh and sleep at night in bed together.
And you wake in tears sometimes, I can see the thoughts flash across your eyes.
They say, “Darling will you be kind?
Will you be a good man and stay behind if I get old?”

Then the letters all flash through my head
With the words that I was told
About the fading flesh of life and love
The failures of the bold.
I can list each crippling fear like I'm reading from a will.

And I'll defy every one and love you still.
I will carry you with me up every hill.
And if you die before I die,
I'll carve your name out of the sky.
I'll fall asleep with your memory and dream of where you lie.

It may be better to move on
And to let life just carry on
And I may be wrong.
Still I'll try.

Because it's better to love whether you win or lose or die.
It's better to love whether you win or lose or die.
It's better to love and I will love you until I die.

All these inanimate places feel like they’re changing.
And the kids all lined up on the wall look like they’re ready to die.
These forms they’re sending, it’s like they'll just rearrange them.
We were caged up like animals questioned and ready to cry.

‘Cause I was just thirteen when I got my first taste of danger.
Standing by the church, I had a bottle and a pen in my hand.
I said, “Father, I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to do with this anger.
This behavior is correctable. I know this wasn’t part of your plan.”

But punks like us were always receiving instruction.
And you could burn our clothes, you could wash out the ink and the dye.
But you can’t look me in the eye and say you don’t feel like a little destruction.
And the kids are lined up on the wall and they’re ready to die

All these days just feel like they’re getting longer.
The view from my room is a gloomy and overcast grey.
The weakness we left behind seems to be getting stronger.
I swear there’s something in the air, and I don’t know what anyone could say.

‘Cause I saw it in the news this morning.
There was another boy by the side of the road. He had a gun in his hand.
And I thought, “Well what could you say to make it ever make sense to his mother?”
“Oh ma’am, he was excitable, we were just trying to make him a man”?

But the day will come when it falls like a cheap house of plastic.
And the cards that were dealt will be tossed like a storm in the sky.
Because you can only lie for so long before you cause something drastic.
And the kids are lined up on the wall and they’re ready to die.

It’s another fine day of nation-building. Let’s have a parade.
You can dance on the graves and bones of their children, if you know what to say.

And you know it’s begun from the beat of the drum and the screams
from the mouths of babes. And we pray as we’re watching the charade.

Welcome to your wedding day.

It’s a damn good day for the heart and mind, and the party’s happening here.
If you’ll avert your gaze from the word on the sign, let me whisper it in your ear:

‘Cause the sign says “run.”

And you know it’s begun from the crack of the guns and the screams
from the mouths of babes. And we pray as we’re watching the charade.

Welcome to your wedding day.

“And we want peace”
“Yeah, we want peace”
“And we don’t negotiate with terror”
“We only watch them beg.”

And you know it’s begun from the crack of the guns and the screams
from the mouths of babes. And we pray as we’re watching the charade.

Welcome to your wedding day.