This has happened before and it will happen again
A charlatan for affection
Becomes bankrupted and amazed
And meanders through dusk and dawn
Like a little lost boy

And his ambition and glory break
In harmony with the heart on his sleeve
Held together by bright longing
But he will wear one memory like a crown
For falling for the impossible

My heart is a burning city
Held up by pillars of salt
No one's sure how it started
A cigarette astray?
Catherine O'Leary's heartbreak?

Job lives in a house on the hill
On the teetering outskirt of town
He visits twice a week
And carries a purple umbrella for the ashes

Can pity turn into love?
Can saying it make it real?
Are we doomed to dream of a lucid skyline stained orange?
Slaving over carting wheelbarrows full of gristle
Of the burning tower I used to be

My silhouette on the horizon
Is the hunchback of New England

This will be a love song about a love that never happened
'Cos every good ship takes down its captain
When you're lonely and desperate and never feel any different
You write about a better life to try to wish it to existence

I been down on my knees all sallow and pale
But any man'll pray when he's starving in the belly of a whale
'Cos if there's a God up there he don't give a ****
The only thing I have faith in is my bad luck

I want a pretty wife and a house and a big family
Work my fingers to the bone to provide for my family
But that life is a dream of a man addicted to drifting
I could drive this whole country and find nowhere worth staying

I'm sick of holding onto this this handful full of broken glass
That's stained with things from my past
And I'm sick of you being in all that I'm thinking
Even when I'm asleep it's about you I'm dreaming

I'm a failure and a drunk and as much as I'm down
I got a little bit of hope I can turn this thing around
And I'll still keep my pride if I fall to suicide
'Cos there's no way in hell or heaven I'll let death take me alive

This bottle of ***** is all too well abused
It makes my existence feel like an excuse
Well maybe somebody else could put it to some use
'Cos the circle of life feels just like a noose

I've always wondered how Atlas felt
And if he was ******* with the hand he was dealt
And I quote from the walls of this flesh colored cell
We're all born and we all die and neither leaves a very nice smell

I feel like an ocean churning in the gut
Of a low life, homeless, ****** eyed drunk
Lyin' on his back after Atlas shrugged
Off the weight of the world like it was all junk

This little heart of mine is eating me alive
This little light of mine is burning me alive

This is a chance
To turn our zeroes into ones
And gather up our teenage years
And burn them

While the milk eyed chandelier has cut the bean stalk
And you tumble into shattered glass stained with self-doubt
There is a persistent and soft haze
That I will breathe into you

Somewhere in between the distorted coloring
Of your masochistic schism beauty awakens
And the flame that peels off of my affection
Will embrace you between the never and the now

Hands on rope
Swaying frayed and free,
Palms torn and burnt

A reckless lover waiting for arms outstretched,
But free fall in bliss!

We never found Rio after that party on the beach
We thought she just ran off with some rich man
Then two weeks later her body washed up on the shore
But to this day you can still see her footprints in the sand

Hey Rio, I miss your haggard heart
Like on the summer days when we tied that wolf's heart to a kite string
And drug it all through the dirt

We got wasted and danced, danced, danced to the radio
I held on so tight 'till your palms were raw
And through all that blood and sweat and smiles
We spent those summer days in vagabond bourgeois

Hey Rio, I miss your tear-jerking yearning
Like the summer days when your voice echoed through the hallways
And tore down the walls I built around me
You tore down the walls I built around me