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

I lowered the wrecking ball into your throat
You were sleeping so I closed the curtains
I saw your eyelids flicker with a dream
And I whispered for you to stay
I pulled up a chair and I sat beside you
Biting my lip until it begins smoking

And all of this disorder!
I was a hungry infant and you played my mother
And I clung with white knuckles
And you made me promise I wouldn't let you leave
But that is a promise I'm not going to keep

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

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

We are the fury and the greed and the filthy hearts of fishermen
Wrapped necks in their own line fed on by the fish with milk white eyes
We are the rotten apples plucked off the tree of the divine
We are the rotten apples plucked off the tree of the divine

Our father breathes diseases, our father breathes diseases through his fingers
Blows them out from his hands like hot ashes sticking to our eyes

We walk the paths wolves fear to pray but for what reason or a reason at all
Our love is in violence and our love is in pain and we love that we feel this way
We are the rotten apples plucked off the tree of the divine
We are the rotten apples plucked off the tree of the divine

Our mother breathes earthquakes, she breathes earthquakes from her lungs
And the earth will open us and swallow you whole, and it will and it will

Steady hands are something I've never known
Trying hard as hell to hold my weapon straight
But a shot in the dark is a shot in the dark
Wherever the bullet hits, c'est le vie, that's fate

Are you lurking in the shadows in the corner of my good eye?
Waiting to catch the bullet on its flight
Or do you have your back turned unaware
That this little chance I'm taking might take your life?

Steady hands are something I've never known
Trying hard as hell to let these words ring out
Like a shot in the dark, but still a shot in the dark
Scared to scare you with what these words will be spoken aloud

Will you ever eye me through the scope of my outstreched arms?
Sometimes Eden ain't as great as it's made out
And although the world is cold and bitter to you
Just know for this moment you're all I dream about

You had it comin' kid
You were already pushin' your luck
Your fatal flaw was thinkin' two broken hearts
Could patch each other up
But if anyone was born to run it's you
I guess with you I was born to lose
'Cos any time I gained any ground
The bottoms fell outta my shoes

A bunch of us boys got together
To watch the dreams of the girls float down the river
It shone like Gold like Midas was drowning
And when the rain started it just kept on coming
No shelter, no rain coast
Shipwrecked, not one of us could float
We were all star crossed lovers
Tortured by the thought of losin' one another

I miss our drunken weekends
When our feelings leaked through our teeth
Our tongues used to be tied together
Now we don't even speak
So I'll just wrestle down this whiskey
Until I can't feel it bite
Then stride home like a colossus
In the dying dead of night

We got a bunch of the guys together
And reminisced about the girls we left by the river
But nobody said nothin'
And the rain beat on the windows, it kept on comin'
Yeah we think too much
So we drink too much
We're all star crossed kids
Lookin' for a way outta this

******* these cold nights under the street lights
Where the houses loom under the bruise of the moon

A bunch of us boys got together
To watch the dreams of the girls float down the river
It shone like Gold like Midas was drowning
And when the rain started it just kept on coming
No shelter, no rain coast
Shipwrecked, not one of us could float
We were all star crossed lovers
Tortured by the thought of losin' one another

So maybe fated lovers never last
I know I shoulda known all along.

I got a love for blood money
And any ***** little ****
Who gives me just enough

TO put down the bottle
TO put on a new pair of jeans
TO change the sheets on the bed

God knows if she don't nothin' from me
I'm gonna give her everything I got

God knows I'm gonna be staining those sheets
And sweating it all out till my stomach turns
And my heart stops beating again

Maybe you could be my Maria
But maybe my Maria is all you'll ever be
Am I alive or is this just a vivid dream?
Or am I just making up stories?

If I grew wings I'd stay out of the air
'Cuz I've knocked on Heaven's door but nobody seems to be there

Sleepwalker, I've been chasing you for days
Its been 'round twenty two years since I've seen your face
I want to dance with a question, I'm through with talking straight
Sleepwalker, I want to change your name

All the highway signs are painted with your name
Oh, the way you love me could be just a car up in flames
But as white as my knuckles get
I'm pushing down, I'm flooring it

And the streets howl of lost love caution underneath my wheels
But these cold streets couldn't ever understand what I feel

Sleepwalker, you're no dead end avenue
A morphine dream from a concrete point of view
I follow the chalk outline of a kiss to your castle in the air
My salvation found in the tangles of your hair

Oh, I've been chasing you for days
Sleepwalker, are you finally awake?

My star is shines so brightly
It illuminates the night
With the blue hue and the bloodshot
That's leaking in my eyes
My star it sings so softly
Over beautiful machines
That keep my star still breathing
And me from bursting into screams

My star is burning whitely
Skin that's withered to the bone
I can almost see right through you
I wonder, are you already a ghost?
They say your heart's a time bomb
And I'm curious to why
You stay here with me in this body
When you belong up in the sky

I woke to the sound of my heart beating in my ear
And a dry taste upon my tongue
I've got an hour to get back to sleep
I'm much too old to feel this ******* young
I always say I can't wait for sunken eyes
To be on the cover of magazines
But if I ever slept at night
I would never have any dreams

Fated lovers never last
I know
I've known all along

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

I found my way through postcards to a dead end avenue
It reminded me why I left this place and I knew just what to do
So I jumped inside a space suit and sank into your soul
Now it's hard to hold a smile when it's always so ******* cold

I came across a crucifixion and my teeth started to fall out
I tried to ask for forgiveness but I was too late 'cos what I said was mumbled out
And my nerves started crawling like worms out of my mouth
Those coffee colored cowards curled into musical rounds

And tell me if you've heard this one...where the three blind mice eat other?
And the thirteenth fairy was Jack Kevorkian and did that sleeping girl a favor
Then in the courtyard I found Jesus hooked up to a morphine drip
I asked him about the human race he said "I couldn't give a ****"

So I walked into the jungle that was tangled like your hair
I've been down to this dead end before and I really couldn't care
That I was walking back through postcards that were naked in my dreams
We're just like fish without fins trying to swim up a dried up stream

We were primates swinging from the branches of skyscrapers
And our cooing come ons lost in translation
Sharing body heat to keep us warm inside old office buildings
Where the ghosts of typewriters flit about the ground floor
And we let our blood vessels ebb and flow
We became cynical at the thought of falling in love
Like hard tack candy caught in the teeth of giants
We're getting older but our mouths still tastes like strawberries

We'll build our home on a mountain of shopping carts
Our children will be the hum of the generator
And the occasional sunburst we get through the grimy window
Can be the laughter of a family board game
Unconscious of our own bodies, not knowing our own
Only the ebb and flow you, the sky, that falls
Upon the roar of I, the wild ocean
With our bodies building a sanctuary for the sparrows

Will you still love me when the bomb turns the cities to snowflakes?
The sky is on fire but at least I know you're warm

When I was walking through Violet's Way
And thinking of a good ghost story to tell
You were the cracking neck in my acid trip
The rabbit hole in the bottom of a wishing well
And I've cast so many pennies down to the bottom
Hoping that time might freeze
And I pray to a God that I barely believe in
That you'll never get sick of me

And I've been patient, I've been kind
But I never get the chance to exercise
The best I can do is shake off the dust I'm wearing
I've been naked before but never not ashamed
But you kept your gaze, never looked away
When all I recall is my ex's with x's over their eyes glaring

Some of my favorite times with you
Are when we drink so much that whatever we say
We can pass off as alcoholic rambling
Even though it means so much more than...
Three months and fourteen days?
I've skipped plenty of rocks into rivers
Barely counting it past three times
But what I've seen in those small ripples
Can only be spoke out loud in the language of mimes

All I can hope is they set our tone to music
And I just hope that I can hear it
My awkward little steps with a walking stick
I love this dance, but my knees are shaky and unfit

Even if the world would end, and we'd be the last people alive
I'd still pull the covers over us while I take the dive

We sat outside in an empty parking lot
High as the jets tracing white lines in the sky
Like a movie, when I started to daydream about you
I felt your fingers brushing over mine

I wish I could tell you I wasn't so scared
To fall for a beautiful girl
For sure, it'll go South when Winter comes around
But for now just let me get lost in your curls

It could be better, it could be worse
One one hand I'm dying, on the other I'm alive
It's a blessing attached with a curse
But god ****** I'm willing to try

You're the cracking neck in my acid trip
The penny at the bottom of a wishing well
The ***** I could use to chase away the blues
A quiet place to rest in this hell

We're changing as people
We're changing with the leaves
We're on seperate trains with the same destination
But when we get there I doubt you'll ever see me

And on the ides of October
My lips got so dry that they split open and bled
And you just looked on like a faded painting
Of something sincere that was never said

So if you look back to your past
I'll carry a torch for you
So it won't seem so bad
And may inspire something long overdue

In and out and in and out

He talks like a dead radio
The years are skin and bone
The chalk outline beat faster
Than the blades of the helicopters

But in and out and in and out
Taking in the ****
Suffocating the starfish
No exit from this route

The twilight folk are breathing
In and out and in and out

I discovered on the spiderweb
When the noon sun kicked me out of bed
Let Winter beat back Spring
So the bees and spiders stay asleep

Nobody's gonna talk me out of this
But I wish they'd try
Push the pills into my mouth
Only waking up surprised

I'd rather be sleeping next to you
With my cracked lips painted blue
In and out and in and out
Taking in the ****
It's better not to live through this

In and out and in and out
The cradle is rocking endlessly
Till the babe inside gets dizzy
In and out and in and out

I dreamed last night that I spoke with the Earth
And it said in my time of dying and in my fever dream
There were cyber punk priests and their god complexes
And congregations of honest men itching for trigger time
The carnivores from my childhood came with molten teeth
And my fever dream swept clean around the earth

Then she said I felt as you did often
Like a magnifying glass when the red ants took revenge

The sun is drowning in the horizon
Flailing its brittle breaking rays
The Oakridge girls sweat in the factory
Sisters of Mercy in a hospital 10,000 miles away

Chasing down a wailing ambulance
Inside, a patient who swears he's still alive
His eyes are crying milk white protein
The Priest and Doctor insist to him he die

And I've become so lonesome
Now that the Oakridge girls are gone
The dusk is blood red in the East
But a celebration is started with the dawn

Nothing, no nothing ever changes
Quick and clean if you are blind
Charlene will turn your heart to stone
But the Oakridge girls are always kind

Playing kiss and tell with a broken speak n spell
Like a backward broken record, needle dug into my nerves
Slurring love into a verb, I'm drunk on your curves
I'm broken into black and white and you're a piano tuner

I play warped and out of key but together we make hushed harmonies
My goddess of the vinyl sky, the crack and pop of our bodies
I used to trace you as a chalk outline of my favorite hobby
But its the way your fingers play over the bubbles and hammers

There was a young boy sitting on a porch swing
Thinking about the nest of wasps nestled under the gutter
He had been attacked by the nest after venturing too close
And his legs and his arms were swollen like a mosquito pregnant with blood

He was thinking of war and he was thinking of his father
Who had gone to war and left without a trace of him

His grandmother was calling out his name but he did not hear
As he was lost in thought

His grandmother had lost her legs to diabetes
And now was rotting in this house, in her final years
She would call out to him for help and he often wouldn’t hear
And she would berate him with promises of nothing for him

She would sit and listen to an old clock radio
That only picked up religious broadcasts
And she would listen to the gospel being barked distorted
Through the tiny speakers that garbled the words

He began to watch the wasps from a safe distance
To pass the time or for distraction
After her disease took his grandmother
He did not eat for three days

Not that he was traumatized
But he didn’t know how to cook
And nobody had noticed
That she had died

While watching the wasps towards the end of the summer
In a dry day
He began to wander and wonder about her
And he turned on her radio

All he heard was static

I've always wanted to fall in love with a satis
I'd set her high on a Trojan horse
And maybe the ranger ain't the death toll
He's off whistling a tune that sounds a little like silver bells

It's never my own words that I get caught up in
And like Brackett said it's the little things
But it's never come 'round right
But I'll be laced through your fingers in any time

I'm sizing up a rope and a steady beam
To put myself between the bullets of reality and dreams
Where the archer's pulling broadheads out of a scorpion's side
And the sheperd's purse smells just like a flatline

You used to hold your hands over your ears
So I whispered my devotion into your confusion
When I laid my head down on your *******
That's the first time I've ever heard my heart beat

And every time I look in backward angles
Your face bleeds into the corner of my eyes
And if worlds apart should be the death of Casanova
Then I'll go down with the ship whistling the color of your hair

I found you underneath the moonlight
When the lights blacked out a quarter past one
And while everyone was bummed out it was ending
You were still dancing to a song all your own

The light it turned your skin into purple
And it hid your face like a wedding veil
I watched you twirl all around me
And in the sunrise you slowly disappeared

While I was waiting out on the balcony
I heard you cry up from the ground
So I left you three blue roses
So if you ever come back you'll know I'm hangin' around

I wrote this to remind me
For the time when I get old and gray
And if my memory starts fading
This way I know you'll never fade

It weighs heavy on you
Even when you've never spoken before
And when they pass through the distance
Like a radiowave, or a stormcloud
And to see how many rivers snake to their final shake
That drips off like morning dew in the middle of the night

Would I be missed that much?

Your psychobabble at 3 A.M. on a lonely night
A year after my best friend died
Helped me more than any therapist
Or any drug ever did

Now I'm tongue tied
My tongue is like loose shoelaces
And I'm tripping over every word
That comes pouring out like a cheap bottle of wine
That keeps us awake long enough to realize
That something between us is still screaming for life

And those times when you drink enough to kiss me
My heart beats so fast that I start to pray it won't explode

And I envy every boyfriend
That's got to lie awake with you at night
While you were writhing in pain from your sickness
That I wish I could blow away like dandelion seeds

And I realize
That I plan ahead like a game of shogi
And I haven't even asked you to join me
In trying to polish off a bottle of this cheap wine
That's kept me awake for four days and four nights
So afraid that something between us has died

And those times when I don't hear your voice
I reach out and imagine that I'm shaking hands with a phantom
Of the craziest little thing...
But to me it's everything

I found God naked in a bathroom stall
Writing my epilogue by running his fingers
Through the dried tobacco spit on the wall
Embarrassed by his nakedness
And in an effort to save his grace
Drinking his last swell of coffee
And choking up the dregs
With a gesture fit for a trucker's romance
He wiped his nose with his hand
And offered a shake fit for a ticket taker

"Its nice to finally meet the man
That made me feel afraid to die"

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

All my love will haunt you
When you search for something new
With open arms I try to grab
What's left of what you left behind

Lookin' back to the last exit
On a highway goin' nowhere
Fated lovers never last
No, I've known that all along

But you were my dream girl
And I wasn't ready to wake up
But my pride puts the pedal closer to the floor
Call me, come running, but there'll no place for you here anymore

No, I don't want you to grow old alone and die
I want the guilt of what you did to me to eat you 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