Where have I been all your life?
Sitting on fences-a novocaine for all the senses.
Another year will pass us by.
Making sense of nothing, in defense of something.
I laughed too late and dug myself into a grave.
This year I'll try not to think too much.
This year I'll try to stand up for myself.
This year I'll live like I've never lived before,
This is my year for sure.
Another stupid clumsy story.
More accidental aspirations.
Another explosion of silence.
I think I'm going deaf, or maybe I'm just hearing less.
This year I'll try to only listen to myself.
This year I'll try not to think too much.
This year I'll try to stand up for myself.
This year I'll live like I've never lived before,
This is my year for sure.
I wonder where you'll be bringing in the New Year.
As midnight clocks are singing,
Good chance I'll be slobbering somewhere.
Probably pass out, wasted, and sleeping until the smoke clears.
Vague memories of midnight flash in tune to morning sunlight.
Wake up knowing you'll never be there.
I've got 100 resolutions, but I've got no solutions.
I've got one song I write 100 times.
And only a dozen or so rhymes.
This year I'll try not to drink so much.
This year I'll try to stand up straight.
This year let's live liked we've never lived before,
Jackknifed, my strife, take it easy, sit outside.
I just died one thousand times yesterday.
Lay down. Drown out, drowning in these cries and shouts.
Changing so fast that it stays the same.
Encryption ensconces this cryptic cliché.
If it's not stupid, it's more of the same.
I'm too tired to care, we're too busy to think.
So let's sit back and laugh and watch the ship sink.
The hull and the bow and the smokestacks disappeared
And we watched it go down with a streaming Bronx cheer.
Thank you dear. I will sleep and get up and eat unaware.
But don't forget to forget you forgot me,
When I show up at your door
I'm gonna remember that you are my friend,
And fall asleep on your floor
Winter is coming, can you find your coat?
Let's go watch the water while the bodies still float.
Slit my throat. It's more than a tad overdue.
Slit my throat. I can't die in here 'til next June.
I breathed, it was smokey. I cried, it was steam.
I dreamed that I slept and I actually dreamed.
What it is, is a sickness. What it is, is regret.
And I might be dying, but I’m not dead yet.
So don't forget to forget you forgot me,
'Cause when I show up at your door,
I’m gonna remember that you are my friend
And fall asleep on your floor.
Winter is coming, can you find your coat?
Let's go watch the water while the bodies still float.
Slit my throat. It's more than a tad overdue.
Slit my throat. I can't die in here 'til next June.
I breathed, it was smokey. I cried, it was steam.
I dreamed that I slept and I actually dreamed.
What it is, is a sickness. What it is, is regret.
And I might be dying, but I’m not dead yet.
Don't forget to forget you forgot me,
When I show up at your door,
I’m gonna remember that you are my friend
And fall asleep on your floor.
I’m gonna remember that you are my friend
North Richmond Street is blind
It's too hard to keep saying goodbye
Early morning snow is falling
shorter days of winter coming
Araby
The darkness is all you see
Take care of me
The same blood is all I bleed
I could see the smallest things
Lights flicker in the houses
on the west side of the street
If I could find the perfect words to sing
maybe you would understand
the truth that I have seen
Late afternoon, the snow's still falling
colder days of winter coming
Araby
The darkness will set you free
Take care of me
One life is all I need
North Richmond Street will bloom
The bright lime green walls
watched me sit in silence.
And everything that had happened
faded into nothing.
Four a.m.-concrete bed.
Rented car-thoughts in flames.
I didn't know what I was even doing there.
Afternoon. Market daze.
Crowded night. Glowing streets.
Around me everything was buzzing.
All alone/Sushi train-
I wandered through the streets again.
Lime green walls. Sake dreams. In and out of
restless sleep-
It was a Long day/killing time/long day...
So I waited for the morning-
for birds and cars to come alive.
Slightly sick at sunrise, coughing hard,
I went for a drive.
The sun warmed my skin and cleared out my
congested head.
I found myself alone in the museum.
And I felt some way I'd never felt.
And I wanted to share it with someone else.
Poorly lit payphone booth.
Friendly voice. Shredded throat.
Lime green walls laugh again.
Thoughts erupting from my head-
Last day, salty mouth-
Ocean breathes against my skin.
Chinatown. Killing time.
maybe someday this will all make sense.
Why the lime green walls just laugh again.
You've got stars over head
I've got a wind-chill
well below negative ten
I've got snow and I've got ice
I've got sun, I've got rain
I've got you all the same
I've got rain
I've got sun when it shines
I've got strings
and calloused fingers
a scratchy throat
a melody that lingers
I've got paper, I've got ink
I've got a bunch of notes I scribbled down
I think I can make a song somehow
And when I'm gray and blue
I've got pictures of you
And when I'm blue and gray
I've got clouds to chase away
You've got green ocean eyes
I've got dreams as the crow flies
I've got cold
I've got clean midwestern sunlight
I found peace in my heart
you burn like a fire in the dark
I've got heat, I've got embers
I've got sparks
The past is dead
but lives on through memory
A cloudy head
that is my history
And some of my friends
they love their misery
As the river bends
There are no second acts they say
in our America today
And every day I watch the tides
the dock light glowing through the night
The land is dark and quiet
I don't turn the pages
Somewhere I lost that fire
The story never changes
What does our closest future hold?
Day at a time I suppose
And all these books just fill the walls
no friends to clutter up these halls
The house is dead and lonely
I don't turn the pages
You were the one and only
The story never changes
There are no second acts they say
in our America today
What does our closest future hold?
I massacred the afternoon
To the sound of rain drumming against parked cars.
I drenched myself in desperate colors for you.
I was dripping for your sympathy.
I wear this weakness on my sleeve.
I'd like to put you on. I'd like to wear you out.
Solitary day. Forgive me for the blood you shed.
City of night-Hear my footsteps.
They echo through these empty streets.
I've been haunting this apartment at night.
Closed lips, abandoned ships,
straightened with paper clips.
And I get nauseous when the light isn't right.
I listen faithfully when they illuminate for me.
I wear your greatness on my spine.
I'd like to steal your words. I'd like to give you mine.
Solitary day. Forgive me for the war I waged.
City of night-Hear my heartbeat.
It echoes through these flooding streets.
I spent my time fishing through pockets of old winter coats
looking for a weathered New York City subway token charm
But instead I found a shattered silver pocket watch
a present given to me to mark my twenty first year
But the time had never stopped
The months rolled on
Nine years passed without a sound
the ticking heart bead dead and gone
I wasted days thinking about how I wasted so much time
I sat alone in my room while the weeks went by
Someone save me from this tomb in Graceland
I was hiding in an attic the past two years
cuz I'm a fugitive
Call the detectives in
I'm ready to confess
all the terrible things I did
All this blood flows like water.
Adrenaline-pumping through me.
Read my mind, this is catastrophic.
I'm on wire. Please come over.
I'll cool down for a moment.
With heavy heart I rage like fire.
So I get high-this landscape levels.
Slows down my mind.
Pry me out of house.
It's a fatal situation now.
Shut me up-this mind in motion.
She is a bird. Her wings are beating.
Winter light filled and flowed from her eyes.
Soft warm earth, I was romancing her curves.
And I want her to build a frame.
And stretch my skin out like a canvas.
Then with her brush and oil paints
She'd dream along my vertebrae.
These are the saddest of possible words:
"Tinker to Evers to Chance."
Trio of bear cubs and fleeter than birds,
Tinker and Evers and Chance.
Ruthlessly pricking our golden gonfalon bubble,
Making a Giant hit into a double-
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
I tie my shoes-leave the house,
board the train and keep on moving.
My thoughts are thickening.
Trees fill me like you're whispering,
"The night is fading." Hey there friend.
I think we had a lot in common.
The feeling is dead.
Maybe it's just lost and needs to be found again.
Just keep on moving.
A manic walk-It's just the panic talking.
So keep on breathing. Don't stop creating.
I stared and studied the structure of your face.
To feel connections, some form of deeper meaning.
My skin will crawl and in the morning it will fade a little.
I can't find a home. I'm a stranger in this city now.
Tonight I think she might be losing me.
Tonight I know she'll never set me free.
Who do you think would even show up at the funeral day?
Staring six feet down, that's my hallowed ground
Just a bed of dirt and bones, that's where I'll lay
Words carved like a poem into some cheap headstone
And who's so lucky
but to have a few dear souls tried and true?
And could you even hear the brassy sounds
of the last bells crying out?
I'm just a dark horse
with a pale heart
on a cold night
for a long walk
Just a dead flame
fuck this old game
lay me down now
I've got a new name
Would anyone show up with a few last words to say?
And toast my final hour, at least piss on my grave?
Maybe there's a sad song that a lonely trumpet could play
The tune could flutter on into an evening sun
And who's so lucky
but to have a few dear souls tried and true?
There won't be a chorus from a crowd
I belong to the sea
To the algae far beneath
Swimming with the whales and the sharks
in the never-ending breeze
Under a map of unknown stars
are the deepest, darkest hearts
Like the wreckage far off shore
I'm dead asleep on the ocean floor
My time will come
The waves will crash
The mast will fall
The sea will rise
The storms will pass
The sharks will sail on
I belong to the sea
To the valleys in the deep
To the plant-life and the fish
and the shining coral reef
To the last and shipwrecked souls
telling legends of treasure and gold
To a mutiny that begins
This brain is a buzzing beehive.
Swarming through infestation.
My muscles pulse and burn alive.
Tonight they crave sensation.
And when the night finally falls
She'll wrap her arms around me.
And when I drop into the sea.
Let me rise in glory.
I'm one in the glow of the rising sun.
Across these walls are my loathing scrawls.
I hear the water underneath the bridge.
This day was a slanting misfire,
A selfish infatuation-
All my lovers live on pages.
It leaves me lonely, reading.
And from this perch I am a god.
The river speaks to me,
One final step.
And I will fly into that waiting darkness.
So I glide blindly through the streets.
And I can hear the traffic haze.
The war will never end.
It crackles through the speakers.
I watch as the landscape roll on by.
And all the drinks have warmed me up
from my toes on through my fingers
I made it through this day alive.
Everything must go wrong before it goes right.
So all the pages that I wrote will burn tonight.
My mind skirts around the bend.
The days have started to unravel.
And I may never sleep again.
And once I had so many thoughts
that I wanted to convey.
But it seems my day is at an end.
Everything will go right all in good time.
And all the pages that I wrote
We're so starry eyed.
This war is noise.
Another coldfront's moving in
There's no perfect way to live.
But keep an open heart.
And I've got so much more to give,
If I could only find a way to show you all I've got.
Nothing's worth this heavy heart.
And less and less I even care.
It's too late for old dreams.
All my life I made excuses.
Recent nights-obliterated.
Sea of lights-shining on.
He set me up for disappointment.
I drank enough to recite the words he wrote
That I'd been singing in my head so long.
Cold rain will fall tonight.
Cold rain will fall. This bar knows my hip.
The way that I tip
this bottle right up to my lips.
And I know this feeling
I drift (soar) through the ceiling
One day out of one thousand I'd guess.
(Yeah one day out of one thousand or less.)
His metaphors have gone to pasture.
All I got is what I have here.
Those old records don't sound the same.
I can't listen to them anyway.
4100 times a day-52 weeks out of the year,
All is here and all is gone.
Nowhere to go but time to move on.
Cold rain will fall tonight.
Cold rain will fall. And I love this feeling.
When I break through the ceiling.
One day out of one thousand I'd guess.
I'm worth five bucks or less
The future is down my neck
My restless soul takes stride
for across this great divide
But I won't heed its cry
won't follow its lifeline
It's time to sink or swim
sail on or anchor in
I'm funny like an aimless fool
I'm as lucky as a funeral
I've got cliches to write
I get high as a kite
My dreams force me to wake
find meaning to this day
Find a way into the night
Grant me with a reason why
I'm sick with the TV on
it drones in the lonely dawn
I'm funny like a nameless fool
I'm not looking at a glass half full
I'm tired of the same old pace
I hate this same old day
How easily I fill this space
handed down from the same old place
I fail with the old streetlights
I bark with the dogs at night
When the moon is full and bright
it smiles in the alley's eyes
Pin me up with the stars tonight
I've been looking for a place to shine
One day it'll be my time
I'm not waiting for the bells to chime
I'll brake like a traffic jam
I'll sing like a slaughtered lamb
Upside down like an hourglass
I've been waiting for the sands to pass
But the storms keep rolling in
sharp teeth on a howling wind
I'm like a penny in a fountain
thrown from a warm and distant
palm unknown
I'm funny like an aimless fool
I'm as lucky as a funeral
Now the world seems
so clear as it disappears
in the blink of a frozen eye
in the course of an hour gone by
One day my star will rise
a new path will open wide
like the mouth of a tiger
I will swallow all my pride
I'm funny like a aimless fool
I'm not looking at a glass half full
I'm tired of the same old pace
I cut corners on the carpets now.
I danced quarters on the windowsill.
The summer left me to a different fate.
This drastic urge will take some time to find its weight.
I run head on into traffic in the afternoon.
I log the longest miles alone at night inside my room.
Where all directions lead right back to me;
all my ambitions swim like driftwood through
my dark sea of sleep.
And it'll take some time but the dawn will come,
yeah the tide will rise.
Her eyes swelled up in the bars of soft lights. I drank and
watched her laugh and then we sang out loud in the dying
streets. And I was so drunk my heart floated
like a feather in the breeze.
I got so high off all the blinking lights,
the colors painted in the night.
Midsummer Classic blue and gold-
Our City casts it's shadow.
The kettle boil heads for a roll.
Sundowning's never getting old.
And underneath this crooked moon
I can smell the night begin to bloom,
the northern wind will change again
and my geography will bend back and forth
across the map until I reach the end.
And it'll take some time.
But the dawn will come-
Dream softly tonight
Breathe easy the cold air of this life
I'm not sure how I arrived
at the choices I made but I made them
I walk along the grass; it's cold and dead
All the cars roar past, they own this world
The headlights move fast, they're in such a hurry
They light up their paths in a blinding fury
And I don't need hope when I just keep on hurling
I don't need no love I got plenty of hurting
She don't hear my cries echo up through dark skies
We all stand in line for the final surprise
I've been digging the same old graves
From the strike against midnight 'til the first break of day
Sleep in peace for one night
Carry the fire always on the inside
Back home nothing has changed
Maybe the weather,
not the beat of the days
And when I'm there at last I'll lay in bed
Half way across the map, a whole new world
My thoughts will race fast they're in such a hurry
They light up their paths in a blinding fury
I've been buried before in the city that I love
Beneath the sidewalks that I walked
and the trains that I rode
All the buildings I lived in and the streets that I drove
Like a ship I was wrecked in our lake's freezing depth
In the place I was born - the jewel of the Midwest
I walked Harrison with blinders on
So many nights over at George's bar
Glasses of old style glow of jukebox lights
Pictures of my past streaming back tonight
Lonely Wabash under curving El
Swimming aquatic of my brainwaves slow down
The streets are soft and dead at 2 am
Drunk/alone again at Jackson Underground
Uptown sunset flooding from the West
Noise rises to my window from the summer concrete
I couldn't bring myself to love this girl
At the airport I just let her go
I was lost in the rye.
The wind blows hard against my burning skin
I'm just another misguided child of fiction
School kids are shouting in the streets
And I wish I was singing in their wide-eyed chorus
These days I swim in disillusion
At night I dream of possibilities
This afternoon I'm stuck in raw nostalgia
Have I arrived at all the wrong conclusions?
Uptown sunset flooding from the west
Noise rises to my window from the summer concrete
I guess I didn't know how to love that girl
High time for the dust to rest
The air is filled with dust and smoke
The cities burned down long ago
Washed in fear we salvage hopes
We walk the same abandoned road
I dance to the here and the now
I dance to the bullets against the ground
We live in the flicker tonight
We chase the waves of dawn 'til we die
The vultures circle overhead
They heard every word I said
We search for ghosts that roam our past
Revel in dreams that never last
I wear a bulls-eye on my back
A scrap of metal in my chest
I live or die with every step
The gloom is brooding in the west
How many lives have I got left?
Just leave my corpse to ride the desert wind
All the winter birds sing my name.
I walk through these same alleys again.
Silver grains of all light fall down.
The pavement is so silent now.
Anxiety is my old friend.
I always hate seeing him again.
I turn up the TV loud
And make it seem like someone else is home.
Brown lines move north. Red eyes no more.
Sun break through the clouds.
My concrete heart melts
I'll listen to the train car hum against the rails.
I'm nothing but endless miles.
And since I've got nowhere to go
I guess I've got nowhere I have to get to.
Color come back to my face-
Sound and light return to the street.
Faint reflection catch my eyes-sunrise.
The waiting is the hardest part.
Sometimes this city speaks without a tongue.
And I could ride this train all day.
Ain't got nothin' but tracks ahead of me.
Today I'm in love with everything.
Tomorrow who knows what the day will bring.
I could ride this train all day.
Ain't got nothin' but tracks ahead of me.
And since I've got nowhere to go
I guess I've got nowhere I have to be.
