Ignore this post.
I'm just posting a bunch of stuff so I can print it out later from a different computer.
I found the stone that David used to slay Goliath
It was lying in the dust next to a thrift store parking lot
How it got there, I don't know, but I was afraid to touch it
I thought that I'd see fire in it, I thought that it'd be hot.
But it wasn't, it was cool
Just another piece of stone
That was only ever famous
On the off chance it was thrown
I found the one and only holy grail
Sitting in obscurity on the back of a thrift store shelf
I thought the cup of Christ would be golden
And shine bright enough to reflect the light down into hell
But it wasn't, it was dull
And a soiled shade of brown
Fit for a carpenter's son
Not the holiest of holy crowns
And I saw the body of the Virgin Mary
Sitting and relaxing on a seedy bus stop bench
I thought that she would be as pure as white snow
Never having known the lusty touch of men
But she wasn't, she was flesh
And the flesh has its needs
And it's been a long time since
The Lord planted that seed
My expectations are getting the best of me
------
Our faces pressed together, it's only natural to kiss. Tomorrow I won't remember, I can guarantee you this. And I feel a little silly and a little bit ashamed because I'm talking without thinking and I barely know your name. But you are pretty and you're sad and you are willing here and now, and that's everything I want. Yeah, that's what it's all about. But oh this isn't even my house, I don't know who's bed I'm on. And the next thing I remember, you are sleeping, it is dawn, and I'm sneaking out the back door. Will I see your face again? Right now I want to go home, take a shower and go to bed. // Early on, well I was thinking what a hypocrite I am cos I hate her for her sexual escapades and one night stands. I keep on drinking to forget her. Sister, bring another round. Make me feel like I am home again, that I was lost and now I'm found. Sophisticated melancholy turns to fumbling passioned youth. False standards get to plunging down into a bitter truth. 'Cos lonliness is negative and when it multiplies itself, well, it isn't quite togetherness but it sure is something else. Our friends begin to disappear or crash and fall asleep, and I don't know what you're saying now but the words are soft and sweet. // I'm creative when I'm killing off the things I've locked inside, for the same reason tender moments only make you want to die. Crazy people in the world, well, I guess it takes all kinds. But maybe you and I are perfect cos we're both out of our minds. So I kiss you on the forehead while you're still barely awake, and I say I still want to see you before I make my escape. But I know that I will disappoint, as history has often shown, or we'll pull each other down into the depths of the great unknown. Why sip water when there's whiskey and it's gin pumps in our veins? It seems normal in the darkened blur but sober, everything's insane. Insane, insane, insane. // I promised not to do this, not to be like this tonight. Cos what's the point in living if it's just a wasted life? I'm used to feeling awkward and I don't mind feeling strange, but I ain't got no self control, so now I'm drunk again.
-----
The guest bedroom smelled like old paint
The walls were striped like college rule
The wind came in through the open window
I could feel it on my hot skin
It trickled it's way in
Nice and cool, nice and cool
She came in through the old pine door
Its hinges creaking like old bones
The springs squeaked as she sat on the bed
And she gave me some advice
About learning to think twice
Things I realised on my own, on my own
And as the night came down
And settled on we two
We were miles apart
Sitting in that room
And as the air grew thick
And heavy with our hearts
We heard the rumbling from downstairs
And something, somewhere, broke apart
The sound rustled up the stairwell
The dragon rumbled in its throat
And it was sharpening its teeth and claws
It sent prickles up my skin
And from the window, on the wind,
There came a sour note, a sour note
-------
Midnight
Shaking, nervously ticking out a slow and deliberate approach,
My hand will rest over yours in perfect unison for a brief moment
And everything will reset.
What was once just mine,
Alone, minute,
Becomes big and important--
Ours.
------
Fourteen Possible Women
1.There is a half-empty bottle of vodka sitting on the floor. Ian Curtis killed himself while listening to The Idiot. All one needs to make a tattoo is a needle, a candle and a pen. It requires patience, pain and precision. “XO Mom. It’s okay, it’s alright, nothing’s wrong.” Remembering: the man in the dress who stole the microphone, the dark corner couch, falling asleep with socks on, watching The Last Unicorn. Years later, I encounter your ex-boyfriend in a record store and he is too friendly for what I am certain he knows.
2.There is a story that involves a small Asian man, several cows and a dead dog. You tell it to me and I laugh, not only because of the warmth and feeling in your voice, but because unlikely things can happen in the real world. You’re curled up on a bed with a drooling retriever and I’m relaxing on the floor with a pillow. As I tell you I will love you for the rest of my life, I remember that the last time I saw you, you were looking over the edge of a cliff from which I had just fallen in my car.
3.Step 2: We have come to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore our sanity. Step 4: We have made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Step 8: We have made a list of all persons we have harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. Instead, the doors are locked, the passwords have been changed, letters are never opened and all the blood runs back down to the drain, whether you believe it or not.
4.If you look at one of those Magic Eye pictures long enough, what used to be an incomprehensible mess of squiggles and shapes suddenly turns into a three dimensional person. There is nothing in the squiggles and shapes to suggest that a person might be lying somewhere within them, but once seen, the truth is undeniable. A sea change takes place across a room, across a conference table, and what used to be an unnoticed shyness becomes a quiet confident singing: “How stupid I would feel if fifteen years from now…”
5.One night, we went grocery shopping at three o’clock in the morning. You were dancing in the aisles of Food Lion, while I was quietly singing along to the background music: “She’ll carelessly cut you and laugh while you’re bleeding.” The cashier and stock clerks must have thought we were demented, by your design. We bought a pizza and almost set a fire in the oven cooking it. I should have known what that meant; we first kissed in another man’s bedroom.
6.There are two kinds of people in the world: those who put their hands up on rollercoasters and those that don’t. Once, when I was riding the same rollercoaster on which Fabio ran headlong into a duck, I sat next to the sweetest senior couple. “We have a grandson about your age.” Once we were over the lift hill, the tone of conversation changed. “Holy shit! I’m seventy fucking years old and I feel fucking alive!” That taught me not to trust your cool, placid exterior. Especially on rollercoasters.
7.Most people are made of metal, if only because it’s a durable material. The truly clever, however, buff their metal into shiny mirrors. With these mirrors covering their entire body, they cannot be seen. Before I get you to take off your mirrors, I will breathe a fog onto the area above your heart and write my name in it.
8. Phone sex operators work out of their homes. They dial in and activate their line, and when a client selects their option, the call is routed to their home phone. She might be reading a book, placidly, on a couch, only to suddenly be screaming “Daddy!” for a few moments, and then return to reading. Some men don’t call for such dramatic display, though. Some just want to talk, about almost anything. For several hours each night, I have been privy to half these secrets from the other room.
9.Once, in a hotel room full of light grey druggy air, three people with the same name sat on a bed. The three of them were almost interchangeable-one loves another, one slept with another, one thinks fondly of another. “I hope that our few remaining friends give up on trying to save us.” It is difficult to even tell who we are anymore. Was I you? Where did you go?
10.How many men can tell the difference between a $30 dress and a $300 dress? Probably less than you’d think. There are some things they do notice, however. Men can know a woman’s smell from any other smell. To test this theory, you open a bottle of cologne he left behind and suddenly you realize the great truth of life: everything would be great if each of us could let go of that one thing.
11.I was pleased to find coffee and donuts being served before the test. Over breakfast, we talked about our fields. I told you I loved the subtlety and trickery of words. You said you preferred the order and structure of math. “One and one will always equal two,” you said. “I like knowing that.” I thought that a strange comfort to your nimble mind. “What about us?” There are exceptions to every rule.
12. She can’t go back to town or they might kill her. So instead, she stays out among the wolves, the unnamed sister of Romulus and Remus. Napoleon on Elba. One has to make the best of the situation, go native, turn Patty Hearst on everyone. If they don’t like it, fuck them, she can change her face, give everything away except that last inch. And then she’s back out in the park at 4am, a bad speller who tries to pretend there’s an “e” on the end of heroin.
13.There is no way to adequately represent a spherical surface in a flat image. This is the secret they don’t tell you-they can change the shape of the world. In fact, no matter how you look at it, it has to become warped somehow. Gerardi Mercator made it seem like Antarctica is a huge frozen thing, lurking underneath the surface of the rest of the world. Not everything is an iceberg. Sometimes what you see is much more than what’s actually there.
14.“This is an actual affidavit, since I was told you wouldn’t believe me otherwise. Of course I knew you knew. In your knowledge, I planted a forest and it was fertile ground. However, I need those trees for other things. I need wood to build a house, a bed in which to sleep, paper on which to write. So it has to be cut down. It’s a shame, really. You once told me you’d like to be struck by lightning. I have been for many years now. But that time is done. Signed….”
------
And if the seven deadly sins threw a party
I'd be the first to get an invitation
Pick me out of a photo lineup
Pick me up late tonight.
Just another educated baby virgin
Still there's something that draws me even closer now
Just how far can I take this
It's gone too far this time
Here's a place that sells cheap cigarettes
I'll load you down with too much information while we stop
Watch you coyly laugh like you don't know what I mean
PIck up two pints of orange cream Mad Dog
Guy at the counter warns us not to hurl our guts
But we are hard as steel from the inside out
And as we're walking home from the party
I might take a moment to confess to you true things
Maybe more truth than you'd care to hear
I've got a strange kind of bounce in my step
And you are cocked and loaded like a brand new gun
Oh look, Helen's turning red again.
--------
When I'm alone, I sit in silence
Until I can feel the silence clawing at my throat
Scan the radio for a distraction
And through a garbled band come the red piano's notes
When I wake up, I wake up lonely
A dollar for fresh coffe from the machine out in the hall
And when I burn my lips on the froth on top
I hear the red piano's notes begin to fall
I keep your old letters in a shoebox
I never see your lips turned up in a lover's grin
But when that red piano's playing
I can't find a box that's big enough to keep it in
Do you still know all the old songs?
Is what I remember anything close to true?
Or have your fingers all but forgotten
All the pretty tricks that they used to do?
---------
I've got one ear to the keyhole and I'm trying to hear you talk
but your words are mumbled, buzzing, indistinct and soft.
And it just seems silly looking for salvation through a lock,
but it's the only thing I know now, and I don't know how to stop.
I thought I heard you moving, you were coming for the door
so I threw my body back and lay out, prostrate on the floor,
wondering if it's evil to be praying you fuck it up.
It can't be because evil is just absence of love.
And yeah, churches always crumble, but the feeling never does.
My father knows the lesson, he says I must learn for myself,
but he knows what it's like to feel helpless, but to help.
Cos out in the real world it's just like the preachers tell,
where the only road to heaven first goes through the pits of hell.
That's what we are learning as I'm dropping o'er the eaves
to watch you weep like Mary while you're praying on your knees.
Ask the Lord and Saviour for the easiest solution
because it's sweet and cheap to act like little children.
If you ever want to grow up, it's clear what you must do then.
The risk is worth the reward if it's true and rightly earned
and God is always happy as long as the lesson's learned.
So even if the stone is heavy, I can't leave it unturned
and I always play with fire even though I might get burned.
When it comes to our survival, it's clearly him or me,
and even though it's primal, that's the way it has to be.
So now we come to battle and I'll take up my sword.
And it's been truly said that all is fair in love and war,
cos I might pray for bloodshed, but I still pray to the Lord.
That's why I don't feel so bad walking down this road,
cos it takes a spark of passion to make spirits explode.
You say that we are time bombs cos it seems we're getting old
and the weight of being holy is such a heavy load.
So tell him he's a free man now and then hang up the phone,
cos the true meaning of freedom is the same as being alone.
And so you and I are prisoners who get suckered in by charms,
and the singing of the angels who are plucking on their harps.
God, please open up the door now, come into my waiting arms.
---------War Criminals
There is a small man, sitting down. He wears a white shirt--it has thin vertical stripes. The man is not thin. He wants to exercise more, but he can't bring himself to do it. He bought a workout machine from a robust man on television, but he could never put it together. Still, if he ever needs to torture a POW, he has it in his basement, though. He doesn't take many prisoners anymore though, he's not on active duty. Now they make him wear a tie--it's paisley and obnoxious, the best protest he can muster against unseen forces. He is writing with a pencil and erasing whatever he writes. There are little eraser shavings all over his desk. There was hair all over the shower this morning. He's going bald, losing out, trying to hide it. It is the future, but people still write with pencils.
It's 1945. Men with hard little green helmets are storming the European beaches. Bombs preceed them--massive explosions. Then the boat hits land and they all swarm out, guns firing, crashing into each other in a manic haze. The enemy is firing back and the beaches become wet and bloody. Not very many men make it past the beaches. The ones that do struggle forward. Their job is to capture the castle, to build a base inside enemy lines. To win the war. Allied men pushed into Germany, but there was never a land invasion of Japan.
When I was younger, I knew a girl who was half German and half Japanese. One day, she disappeared. I think she just flew away--it was the Japanese part of her that did it. At a certain age, Japanese girls grow wings. This is not something they tell you about, but some men have figured it out anyway and written songs about it. But you can't trust someone who has wings when you don't. And you can't trust someone who doesn't trust you--that's why they disappear. American girls grow wings too, but their wings are smaller and mostly just for show. The working theory about this is that they don't eat enough fish.
Another girl I knew when I was younger was a blind prostitute. Not the street kind, the kind that came to you when you called a mysterious number on a card that smelled like lavender oil when you found it in your jacket pocket. This girl had two glass eyes and periodically had to take them out to wash them. If she really liked you, she'd let you hold them--it was kinda creepy, but kinda sexy too. She never used a cane, but her best friend was a tape recorder and her other friends had to babysit it. Once, we were eating breakfast, and in-between bites of a sourdough roll, she told me her favourite colour was red.
There was an army doctor who fought in the war. But when his daughter was born, he finally confessed he was a double agent and defected to Germany with a new wife and a big metal chair to put her in. Years later, the daughter started spying too, but she did it by telephone and made a killing at it. I used to watch her in this process because I'm also a spy--the spies are the only ones left in this thing. What I learned is that her anger wasn't the fire, it was really the smoke. It didn't burn the house down, it was insubstantial and just drifted out an open window and stained the laundry on the clothesline. I wrote a long report to my superiors about the laundry. I assume she did the same.
I've been told I make a very good spy. I've done some of my best work undercover. The enemy always congratulates me, saying they didn't suspect a thing until it was all over and the best of them were in handcuffs. You can't let things like that go to your head, lest they start to compromise your position. Part of avoiding that is having a set way of doing things, a way to get in and out behind enemy lines as much as you need to. It's a matter of willpower--the ability to be stubborn and resist pulling out too early, before you've gotten what you need. In spying, it pays to be a little hard-headed.
For a while, I was spying on a little red girl who was a detective. I found out she was actually yellow, but she painted herself red so that she could blend in with the murder scenes she went to investigate. These murders were something I never totally understood, but she seemed to appreciate them. "See that? That's not blood," she once told me, "that's just the dye from a blanket that's rubbed off on the wall." To prove her theory, she showed me the blanket. It had once been red, now it was white. I suspected it belonged to the blind prostitute, but the detective didn't think so. They were friends.
Sometimes I get secret coded messages from other spies. One of them came from an English spy, trying to investigate the Germans in Poland. "My bones are big Corinthian columns," it said. "Yours are tiny Ionian ones." He was telling me about the invasion that started the war. I didn't understand his message at first, but one afternoon an apple fell on my head and I figured it out.
Most messages originate with the pencil man. He's the best spy of us all because nobody suspects him--even he believes his own cover story. Eventually, though, he lost all his hair, until his entire head disappeared and he couldn't erase what he was writing anymore. That's when they finally got him. They threw a parade for his headless fat ass, shouting through megaphones about how this is what would happen if they caught the rest of us. He was tried as a war criminal and sentenced to death by hanging at a square in Berlin. The whole thing was to be broadcast in Tokyo. In the end, though, they couldn't do it because he no longer had a neck. He's still out there.
-------
Flashes
What's coming through the window's lost everything that makes it sunlight. It's dull, cold, empty--an absence of absence. The radio in the car is broken. I have given up on trying to fix it and my legs are propped up on the dashboard above the glove compartment. I enjoy the silence and the road noise of the interstate. She has not given up and is slamming her free hand repeatedly against the malfuctioning piece of her car. The impacts are making her hand flushed and her face is flushing with frustration. Her dozens of tiny little freckles become more visible, which I love. We are both dying.
Flash back. Underneath the Rockridge station on the yellow line there is a small bench. Blinded by the streetlight on the cool summer night, I am on it, my head in her lap, my feet dangling over the arm. She is speaking in coos and purrs, tiny little white fingers running through my black hair. The hum of the overpass turns to the whispering roar of a passing train. I can smell the Chicago pizza place down the avenue. The silhouettes of dust are the only thing visible. We are both happy.
Flash forward. There are the yelping barks of sea lions over the edge of the pier. My feet hurt from the walk but I no longer care. A man dances with a marionette on the street. A woman is selling t-shirts. We walk into the square, crowded, filled with a golden glow and rich, strange, smells. Mirrors were reflecting us back at each other. We order two hot chocolates and sit facing each other. I can feel each sip searing down my throat, filling my whole body with sweetness and a warm sensation traveling through my bloodstream and opening me up. I am tasting her. We are both completely in the moment.
Flash back. A dog with a name that means "sweet comfort" in Swedish is trying to share a twin bed with us. With a cup of tea in the living room, I make her listen to Leonard Cohen, I know she doesn't care and that she doesn't care that she doesn't care. The house has four rooms and reminds me of summer time, especially when I am cooking. We stay out of the study, we have no business in there. Instead, we walk hand in hand into the bedroom and make love with the door open and the record player still on, not finishing until the needle has been clicking approval in the runout groove for some time. I get up to turn it off. She gets up to make more tea and feed the dogs. We are both naked.
Flash forward. I am sitting on the floor in Portland airport because the waiting area is undergoing construction. People's legs are passing by me. There is a businessman in a suit with a shining leather briefcase. There is a musican with a guitar on his back and a ragged yellow beard on his face. There is a mother tightly squeezing as much life as she can into her son before he enters the security line. There are other people waiting, carried off by hugs and kisses and replaced by more expectant eyes. I am listening to "Suzanne" but not hearing it when I see her. I had forgotten what she felt like, the energy in her tiny frame, the surprising strength in her embrace, the whisper of her red-yellow hair brushing against my face, the way she does not quite entirely kiss. I have not felt those things since. We have both been murdered.
----------
The lights have gone out now all over the city
And the monster is knocking real hard on the gate
And you've tied me down tightly to your boxspring and mattress
To stop holy pronouncements from pouring out of my face
And outside, the weather's got something to prove
While inside the prophetess makes the first move
And when holy fire lights up the whole room
We can see trees of knowledge that are all bearing fruit
Did God create porn films or strip clubs by strip malls
Or is that just man mocking all his creation?
Like tampons in a trashcan in a bachelor's apartment
Another sad mystery without explanation
And if some pretty young thing on a celluloid frame
Is lying on her back and invoking his name
He might come and answer but it isn't the same
When your body takes the hit and your head's in the game
Don't you tell me what I need to know
To get these seeds and fertile fields to grow
Cos I'm a child of this own land
And I've made it by by my own hand
So far but here we are
There's poor mister pinstripe in church on a Sunday
Making a habit of getting down on his knees
Since everyone prays in a different position
And Saint Peter's keyring's got all sorts of keys
And you can make him open up that golden door
So the blessed crowd in like a pack of wild boar
And even all the angels would be asking for more
At the gentle sound of fabric as it falls to the floor
There's a buzz in the air like a temple of virgins
And something in the mood is sickening sweet
So now you are the master and I am the student
But don't expect offerings left at your feet
Cos every young prankster's got a trick up his sleeve
To cast out a demon, cause the devil to leave
But the devil's a trickster and you better believe
That he got to us bad back as Adam and Eve
-------
"Just shoot me if I ever get that desperate
Just put a fucking bullet in my brain."
You turned of the television with a sarcastic glance
And you went out to light a cigarette
I stayed behind and watched the windows get wet
With the rain
Closed the chain behind you as you step out the door
You won't notice what I've done for a minute or two
I hear you talking to yourself, fumbling out in the hall
Swear you had your lighter earlier today
Yes, you did, until I threw it away
Should've let it kill you
Kill you
Kill you
I'll kill you
------
I'm not surprised that
you don't remember
the way that you were when we met.
Your body was broken,
your mind was in tatters,
the sides of your face were wet.
And I was a doughboy
who'd just crossed an ocean,
looking for lands to call home.
No, not even God knew
the trouble we'd get to
with an excuse not to be alone.
You'd been with good men,
whose sole good intentions
just left you empty and black,
so I kept my promise not to be like them.
I never held anything back.
And you were my mirror
that showed all the old marks
I thought I'd hid under my breath,
and I was your bottle
you kept taking hits from
to remind yourself that there's nothing left.
Oh, Melissa, I'd never hate you.
I don't understand why you think that of me.
The war might have ended, but this battle's not over.
No, not by a long shot, take it from me.
-------
Tonights the kind of night where smart people are afraid to leave the house
You can see 'em through the window, fingers in the blinds, eyes peekin' out
Well, I guess I've never been too smart about any of that shit
And so something's going down in someone's basement. I'm in the thick of it.
There's a girl there I sort of know with a beer in hand and a shirt with a hood
She says "You didn't show up with any new scars tonight, that's good."
And as she's talking, she suddenly gets a phonecall from a friend
Who's high as a kite, says "I guess it all comes out the same in the end."
Some guys are piling up on couches just to see who'll be the first to drop
And a girl in bathtubs behind curtains are getting talked into taking off her top
Slowly, slowly everthing's becoming easier to comprehend
Except for how I got here, and how I'm going to be getting home again
[Chorus melody:]
And she wishes she was old enough to have hung with Kesey and the Angels
And she always points out how pretty the other girls are
And she thinks there's something romantic about old leftover matresses
And she always knows where all the best drugs are
And I feel like an encyclopedia full of completely useless information:
The exact dimensions of your bedroom, details of the barbarian invasion.
And you, you don't know nothing, but you've got a lot of heart
You got guys falling left and right for you, and that ain't even the worst part
Well, a friend of mine was growing mushrooms in his apartment's old closet
He had to grow them in shit, the whole place stank cause of it
And now he's gotten busted by the cops for being drunk in public
And the only thing he can complain about is that the uniform's a snug fit
Yeah, you gotta learn to make the best of really shitty circumstances
Somebody once told me that, then blinked and asked: "What are the chances
we'd both be totally in love with that song by David Thomas Broughton?"
Some people see so many omens, I'm not sure how they could live without 'em.
[Chorus melody:]
And she wishes she was old enough to have hung with Frankie and the old Rats
And she calls punk rock a crybaby but she sides with the working man
And she obsesses over the semester she spent out in San Francisco
And she drinks like a sailor, but she always recycles the cans
She said her friends where shooting horse now, on a pretty everyday basis
And it was starting to show itself in those chasmed lines around their faces.
And I said my friends were all on crank, so they came on real fucking strong
Yelling just to be heard, scribbling out lyrics to every Pere Ubu song.
She said her parents used to be Catholic, and they always ate at four
And her cousin's diabetic and is a total attention whore
I told her the crazy stories about my uncle and his fucked up friends
It felt good to be sharing, but god I wish I could really remember them.
So she told me her drug is people, and she gets caught up in the rush
Running back and forth across the line of not enough and way too much
And the next morning, I was cleaning and I found her fucking hooded sweatshirt
And I really ought to return it, but I don't know how to get it back to her
[Chorus melody]
And she wishes she were old enough to have hung out with Andy and the Velvets
And she loves flea markets, junk stores, she's always going antique hunting
And she never takes off the necklace she got from her grandmother
And she says as she leaves "You know I'm always waiting for something."
---------
The lawman's boot is firmly placed
On the apple of my throat
And the stinking mud is seeping through
The defenses of my coat
And to his mud-soaked companions
The lawman from the Bible quotes:
"Now is the time to cast away our childish things"
A wispy woman in a red shawl
Watches sadly over the scene
Picking out a mournful tune
From between an old piano's teeth
And the lawman puts a rotting hand
On her shoulder in her grief
"Now play the song that everyone one day must sing"
The preacher on the gallows block
Is fanatic in his speech
Casting over his parishoners
He says the time must come for each
And as his zealotry flies sticky
From his mouth, he looks down to me
"The bell will toll in hell now for you, wretched thing"
[Instrumental Verse]
A hooded man with one good eye
Slips a rope where boot once sat
"Smile, smile and be a devil"
He says and his teeth are black
"The fact you may be innocent
Sure never will change that."
He nodded, pulled the pole and left me there to swing
--------
Your nervous habits are so cute
You're playing possum in the waiting room
Spying on the other patients
All paper clips and fountain pens
Knotty twists and frayed loose ends
You talk like a double agent
I know that look you're taking on
I guess I've done something wrong
Maybe I called you by your true name
Green contacts for your blue eyes
Soak your hair in bleach and dye
There are some things you cannot change
We're all working for another boss
And someone's gain is someone's loss
But you can't see the difference
They would give you all they earn
It's not about what you deserve
And you don't know what you're missing
When we last spoke over the phone
You said fuck off, leave me alone
I'm sorry that I can't forget you
Cos I still see you everywhere
In that one's laugh, in that one's stare
You would never let me protect you
From that black familliar space
That's written all over your face
Plain as day to anyone who sees it
We don't talk now anymore
A scorched-earth romance between whores
I might have wanted it, but I don't need it
I found the stone that David used to slay Goliath
It was lying in the dust next to a thrift store parking lot
How it got there, I don't know, but I was afraid to touch it
I thought that I'd see fire in it, I thought that it'd be hot.
But it wasn't, it was cool
Just another piece of stone
That was only ever famous
On the off chance it was thrown
I found the one and only holy grail
Sitting in obscurity on the back of a thrift store shelf
I thought the cup of Christ would be golden
And shine bright enough to reflect the light down into hell
But it wasn't, it was dull
And a soiled shade of brown
Fit for a carpenter's son
Not the holiest of holy crowns
And I saw the body of the Virgin Mary
Sitting and relaxing on a seedy bus stop bench
I thought that she would be as pure as white snow
Never having known the lusty touch of men
But she wasn't, she was flesh
And the flesh has its needs
And it's been a long time since
The Lord planted that seed
My expectations are getting the best of me
------
Our faces pressed together, it's only natural to kiss. Tomorrow I won't remember, I can guarantee you this. And I feel a little silly and a little bit ashamed because I'm talking without thinking and I barely know your name. But you are pretty and you're sad and you are willing here and now, and that's everything I want. Yeah, that's what it's all about. But oh this isn't even my house, I don't know who's bed I'm on. And the next thing I remember, you are sleeping, it is dawn, and I'm sneaking out the back door. Will I see your face again? Right now I want to go home, take a shower and go to bed. // Early on, well I was thinking what a hypocrite I am cos I hate her for her sexual escapades and one night stands. I keep on drinking to forget her. Sister, bring another round. Make me feel like I am home again, that I was lost and now I'm found. Sophisticated melancholy turns to fumbling passioned youth. False standards get to plunging down into a bitter truth. 'Cos lonliness is negative and when it multiplies itself, well, it isn't quite togetherness but it sure is something else. Our friends begin to disappear or crash and fall asleep, and I don't know what you're saying now but the words are soft and sweet. // I'm creative when I'm killing off the things I've locked inside, for the same reason tender moments only make you want to die. Crazy people in the world, well, I guess it takes all kinds. But maybe you and I are perfect cos we're both out of our minds. So I kiss you on the forehead while you're still barely awake, and I say I still want to see you before I make my escape. But I know that I will disappoint, as history has often shown, or we'll pull each other down into the depths of the great unknown. Why sip water when there's whiskey and it's gin pumps in our veins? It seems normal in the darkened blur but sober, everything's insane. Insane, insane, insane. // I promised not to do this, not to be like this tonight. Cos what's the point in living if it's just a wasted life? I'm used to feeling awkward and I don't mind feeling strange, but I ain't got no self control, so now I'm drunk again.
-----
The guest bedroom smelled like old paint
The walls were striped like college rule
The wind came in through the open window
I could feel it on my hot skin
It trickled it's way in
Nice and cool, nice and cool
She came in through the old pine door
Its hinges creaking like old bones
The springs squeaked as she sat on the bed
And she gave me some advice
About learning to think twice
Things I realised on my own, on my own
And as the night came down
And settled on we two
We were miles apart
Sitting in that room
And as the air grew thick
And heavy with our hearts
We heard the rumbling from downstairs
And something, somewhere, broke apart
The sound rustled up the stairwell
The dragon rumbled in its throat
And it was sharpening its teeth and claws
It sent prickles up my skin
And from the window, on the wind,
There came a sour note, a sour note
-------
Midnight
Shaking, nervously ticking out a slow and deliberate approach,
My hand will rest over yours in perfect unison for a brief moment
And everything will reset.
What was once just mine,
Alone, minute,
Becomes big and important--
Ours.
------
Fourteen Possible Women
1.There is a half-empty bottle of vodka sitting on the floor. Ian Curtis killed himself while listening to The Idiot. All one needs to make a tattoo is a needle, a candle and a pen. It requires patience, pain and precision. “XO Mom. It’s okay, it’s alright, nothing’s wrong.” Remembering: the man in the dress who stole the microphone, the dark corner couch, falling asleep with socks on, watching The Last Unicorn. Years later, I encounter your ex-boyfriend in a record store and he is too friendly for what I am certain he knows.
2.There is a story that involves a small Asian man, several cows and a dead dog. You tell it to me and I laugh, not only because of the warmth and feeling in your voice, but because unlikely things can happen in the real world. You’re curled up on a bed with a drooling retriever and I’m relaxing on the floor with a pillow. As I tell you I will love you for the rest of my life, I remember that the last time I saw you, you were looking over the edge of a cliff from which I had just fallen in my car.
3.Step 2: We have come to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore our sanity. Step 4: We have made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Step 8: We have made a list of all persons we have harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. Instead, the doors are locked, the passwords have been changed, letters are never opened and all the blood runs back down to the drain, whether you believe it or not.
4.If you look at one of those Magic Eye pictures long enough, what used to be an incomprehensible mess of squiggles and shapes suddenly turns into a three dimensional person. There is nothing in the squiggles and shapes to suggest that a person might be lying somewhere within them, but once seen, the truth is undeniable. A sea change takes place across a room, across a conference table, and what used to be an unnoticed shyness becomes a quiet confident singing: “How stupid I would feel if fifteen years from now…”
5.One night, we went grocery shopping at three o’clock in the morning. You were dancing in the aisles of Food Lion, while I was quietly singing along to the background music: “She’ll carelessly cut you and laugh while you’re bleeding.” The cashier and stock clerks must have thought we were demented, by your design. We bought a pizza and almost set a fire in the oven cooking it. I should have known what that meant; we first kissed in another man’s bedroom.
6.There are two kinds of people in the world: those who put their hands up on rollercoasters and those that don’t. Once, when I was riding the same rollercoaster on which Fabio ran headlong into a duck, I sat next to the sweetest senior couple. “We have a grandson about your age.” Once we were over the lift hill, the tone of conversation changed. “Holy shit! I’m seventy fucking years old and I feel fucking alive!” That taught me not to trust your cool, placid exterior. Especially on rollercoasters.
7.Most people are made of metal, if only because it’s a durable material. The truly clever, however, buff their metal into shiny mirrors. With these mirrors covering their entire body, they cannot be seen. Before I get you to take off your mirrors, I will breathe a fog onto the area above your heart and write my name in it.
8. Phone sex operators work out of their homes. They dial in and activate their line, and when a client selects their option, the call is routed to their home phone. She might be reading a book, placidly, on a couch, only to suddenly be screaming “Daddy!” for a few moments, and then return to reading. Some men don’t call for such dramatic display, though. Some just want to talk, about almost anything. For several hours each night, I have been privy to half these secrets from the other room.
9.Once, in a hotel room full of light grey druggy air, three people with the same name sat on a bed. The three of them were almost interchangeable-one loves another, one slept with another, one thinks fondly of another. “I hope that our few remaining friends give up on trying to save us.” It is difficult to even tell who we are anymore. Was I you? Where did you go?
10.How many men can tell the difference between a $30 dress and a $300 dress? Probably less than you’d think. There are some things they do notice, however. Men can know a woman’s smell from any other smell. To test this theory, you open a bottle of cologne he left behind and suddenly you realize the great truth of life: everything would be great if each of us could let go of that one thing.
11.I was pleased to find coffee and donuts being served before the test. Over breakfast, we talked about our fields. I told you I loved the subtlety and trickery of words. You said you preferred the order and structure of math. “One and one will always equal two,” you said. “I like knowing that.” I thought that a strange comfort to your nimble mind. “What about us?” There are exceptions to every rule.
12. She can’t go back to town or they might kill her. So instead, she stays out among the wolves, the unnamed sister of Romulus and Remus. Napoleon on Elba. One has to make the best of the situation, go native, turn Patty Hearst on everyone. If they don’t like it, fuck them, she can change her face, give everything away except that last inch. And then she’s back out in the park at 4am, a bad speller who tries to pretend there’s an “e” on the end of heroin.
13.There is no way to adequately represent a spherical surface in a flat image. This is the secret they don’t tell you-they can change the shape of the world. In fact, no matter how you look at it, it has to become warped somehow. Gerardi Mercator made it seem like Antarctica is a huge frozen thing, lurking underneath the surface of the rest of the world. Not everything is an iceberg. Sometimes what you see is much more than what’s actually there.
14.“This is an actual affidavit, since I was told you wouldn’t believe me otherwise. Of course I knew you knew. In your knowledge, I planted a forest and it was fertile ground. However, I need those trees for other things. I need wood to build a house, a bed in which to sleep, paper on which to write. So it has to be cut down. It’s a shame, really. You once told me you’d like to be struck by lightning. I have been for many years now. But that time is done. Signed….”
------
And if the seven deadly sins threw a party
I'd be the first to get an invitation
Pick me out of a photo lineup
Pick me up late tonight.
Just another educated baby virgin
Still there's something that draws me even closer now
Just how far can I take this
It's gone too far this time
Here's a place that sells cheap cigarettes
I'll load you down with too much information while we stop
Watch you coyly laugh like you don't know what I mean
PIck up two pints of orange cream Mad Dog
Guy at the counter warns us not to hurl our guts
But we are hard as steel from the inside out
And as we're walking home from the party
I might take a moment to confess to you true things
Maybe more truth than you'd care to hear
I've got a strange kind of bounce in my step
And you are cocked and loaded like a brand new gun
Oh look, Helen's turning red again.
--------
When I'm alone, I sit in silence
Until I can feel the silence clawing at my throat
Scan the radio for a distraction
And through a garbled band come the red piano's notes
When I wake up, I wake up lonely
A dollar for fresh coffe from the machine out in the hall
And when I burn my lips on the froth on top
I hear the red piano's notes begin to fall
I keep your old letters in a shoebox
I never see your lips turned up in a lover's grin
But when that red piano's playing
I can't find a box that's big enough to keep it in
Do you still know all the old songs?
Is what I remember anything close to true?
Or have your fingers all but forgotten
All the pretty tricks that they used to do?
---------
I've got one ear to the keyhole and I'm trying to hear you talk
but your words are mumbled, buzzing, indistinct and soft.
And it just seems silly looking for salvation through a lock,
but it's the only thing I know now, and I don't know how to stop.
I thought I heard you moving, you were coming for the door
so I threw my body back and lay out, prostrate on the floor,
wondering if it's evil to be praying you fuck it up.
It can't be because evil is just absence of love.
And yeah, churches always crumble, but the feeling never does.
My father knows the lesson, he says I must learn for myself,
but he knows what it's like to feel helpless, but to help.
Cos out in the real world it's just like the preachers tell,
where the only road to heaven first goes through the pits of hell.
That's what we are learning as I'm dropping o'er the eaves
to watch you weep like Mary while you're praying on your knees.
Ask the Lord and Saviour for the easiest solution
because it's sweet and cheap to act like little children.
If you ever want to grow up, it's clear what you must do then.
The risk is worth the reward if it's true and rightly earned
and God is always happy as long as the lesson's learned.
So even if the stone is heavy, I can't leave it unturned
and I always play with fire even though I might get burned.
When it comes to our survival, it's clearly him or me,
and even though it's primal, that's the way it has to be.
So now we come to battle and I'll take up my sword.
And it's been truly said that all is fair in love and war,
cos I might pray for bloodshed, but I still pray to the Lord.
That's why I don't feel so bad walking down this road,
cos it takes a spark of passion to make spirits explode.
You say that we are time bombs cos it seems we're getting old
and the weight of being holy is such a heavy load.
So tell him he's a free man now and then hang up the phone,
cos the true meaning of freedom is the same as being alone.
And so you and I are prisoners who get suckered in by charms,
and the singing of the angels who are plucking on their harps.
God, please open up the door now, come into my waiting arms.
---------War Criminals
There is a small man, sitting down. He wears a white shirt--it has thin vertical stripes. The man is not thin. He wants to exercise more, but he can't bring himself to do it. He bought a workout machine from a robust man on television, but he could never put it together. Still, if he ever needs to torture a POW, he has it in his basement, though. He doesn't take many prisoners anymore though, he's not on active duty. Now they make him wear a tie--it's paisley and obnoxious, the best protest he can muster against unseen forces. He is writing with a pencil and erasing whatever he writes. There are little eraser shavings all over his desk. There was hair all over the shower this morning. He's going bald, losing out, trying to hide it. It is the future, but people still write with pencils.
It's 1945. Men with hard little green helmets are storming the European beaches. Bombs preceed them--massive explosions. Then the boat hits land and they all swarm out, guns firing, crashing into each other in a manic haze. The enemy is firing back and the beaches become wet and bloody. Not very many men make it past the beaches. The ones that do struggle forward. Their job is to capture the castle, to build a base inside enemy lines. To win the war. Allied men pushed into Germany, but there was never a land invasion of Japan.
When I was younger, I knew a girl who was half German and half Japanese. One day, she disappeared. I think she just flew away--it was the Japanese part of her that did it. At a certain age, Japanese girls grow wings. This is not something they tell you about, but some men have figured it out anyway and written songs about it. But you can't trust someone who has wings when you don't. And you can't trust someone who doesn't trust you--that's why they disappear. American girls grow wings too, but their wings are smaller and mostly just for show. The working theory about this is that they don't eat enough fish.
Another girl I knew when I was younger was a blind prostitute. Not the street kind, the kind that came to you when you called a mysterious number on a card that smelled like lavender oil when you found it in your jacket pocket. This girl had two glass eyes and periodically had to take them out to wash them. If she really liked you, she'd let you hold them--it was kinda creepy, but kinda sexy too. She never used a cane, but her best friend was a tape recorder and her other friends had to babysit it. Once, we were eating breakfast, and in-between bites of a sourdough roll, she told me her favourite colour was red.
There was an army doctor who fought in the war. But when his daughter was born, he finally confessed he was a double agent and defected to Germany with a new wife and a big metal chair to put her in. Years later, the daughter started spying too, but she did it by telephone and made a killing at it. I used to watch her in this process because I'm also a spy--the spies are the only ones left in this thing. What I learned is that her anger wasn't the fire, it was really the smoke. It didn't burn the house down, it was insubstantial and just drifted out an open window and stained the laundry on the clothesline. I wrote a long report to my superiors about the laundry. I assume she did the same.
I've been told I make a very good spy. I've done some of my best work undercover. The enemy always congratulates me, saying they didn't suspect a thing until it was all over and the best of them were in handcuffs. You can't let things like that go to your head, lest they start to compromise your position. Part of avoiding that is having a set way of doing things, a way to get in and out behind enemy lines as much as you need to. It's a matter of willpower--the ability to be stubborn and resist pulling out too early, before you've gotten what you need. In spying, it pays to be a little hard-headed.
For a while, I was spying on a little red girl who was a detective. I found out she was actually yellow, but she painted herself red so that she could blend in with the murder scenes she went to investigate. These murders were something I never totally understood, but she seemed to appreciate them. "See that? That's not blood," she once told me, "that's just the dye from a blanket that's rubbed off on the wall." To prove her theory, she showed me the blanket. It had once been red, now it was white. I suspected it belonged to the blind prostitute, but the detective didn't think so. They were friends.
Sometimes I get secret coded messages from other spies. One of them came from an English spy, trying to investigate the Germans in Poland. "My bones are big Corinthian columns," it said. "Yours are tiny Ionian ones." He was telling me about the invasion that started the war. I didn't understand his message at first, but one afternoon an apple fell on my head and I figured it out.
Most messages originate with the pencil man. He's the best spy of us all because nobody suspects him--even he believes his own cover story. Eventually, though, he lost all his hair, until his entire head disappeared and he couldn't erase what he was writing anymore. That's when they finally got him. They threw a parade for his headless fat ass, shouting through megaphones about how this is what would happen if they caught the rest of us. He was tried as a war criminal and sentenced to death by hanging at a square in Berlin. The whole thing was to be broadcast in Tokyo. In the end, though, they couldn't do it because he no longer had a neck. He's still out there.
-------
Flashes
What's coming through the window's lost everything that makes it sunlight. It's dull, cold, empty--an absence of absence. The radio in the car is broken. I have given up on trying to fix it and my legs are propped up on the dashboard above the glove compartment. I enjoy the silence and the road noise of the interstate. She has not given up and is slamming her free hand repeatedly against the malfuctioning piece of her car. The impacts are making her hand flushed and her face is flushing with frustration. Her dozens of tiny little freckles become more visible, which I love. We are both dying.
Flash back. Underneath the Rockridge station on the yellow line there is a small bench. Blinded by the streetlight on the cool summer night, I am on it, my head in her lap, my feet dangling over the arm. She is speaking in coos and purrs, tiny little white fingers running through my black hair. The hum of the overpass turns to the whispering roar of a passing train. I can smell the Chicago pizza place down the avenue. The silhouettes of dust are the only thing visible. We are both happy.
Flash forward. There are the yelping barks of sea lions over the edge of the pier. My feet hurt from the walk but I no longer care. A man dances with a marionette on the street. A woman is selling t-shirts. We walk into the square, crowded, filled with a golden glow and rich, strange, smells. Mirrors were reflecting us back at each other. We order two hot chocolates and sit facing each other. I can feel each sip searing down my throat, filling my whole body with sweetness and a warm sensation traveling through my bloodstream and opening me up. I am tasting her. We are both completely in the moment.
Flash back. A dog with a name that means "sweet comfort" in Swedish is trying to share a twin bed with us. With a cup of tea in the living room, I make her listen to Leonard Cohen, I know she doesn't care and that she doesn't care that she doesn't care. The house has four rooms and reminds me of summer time, especially when I am cooking. We stay out of the study, we have no business in there. Instead, we walk hand in hand into the bedroom and make love with the door open and the record player still on, not finishing until the needle has been clicking approval in the runout groove for some time. I get up to turn it off. She gets up to make more tea and feed the dogs. We are both naked.
Flash forward. I am sitting on the floor in Portland airport because the waiting area is undergoing construction. People's legs are passing by me. There is a businessman in a suit with a shining leather briefcase. There is a musican with a guitar on his back and a ragged yellow beard on his face. There is a mother tightly squeezing as much life as she can into her son before he enters the security line. There are other people waiting, carried off by hugs and kisses and replaced by more expectant eyes. I am listening to "Suzanne" but not hearing it when I see her. I had forgotten what she felt like, the energy in her tiny frame, the surprising strength in her embrace, the whisper of her red-yellow hair brushing against my face, the way she does not quite entirely kiss. I have not felt those things since. We have both been murdered.
----------
The lights have gone out now all over the city
And the monster is knocking real hard on the gate
And you've tied me down tightly to your boxspring and mattress
To stop holy pronouncements from pouring out of my face
And outside, the weather's got something to prove
While inside the prophetess makes the first move
And when holy fire lights up the whole room
We can see trees of knowledge that are all bearing fruit
Did God create porn films or strip clubs by strip malls
Or is that just man mocking all his creation?
Like tampons in a trashcan in a bachelor's apartment
Another sad mystery without explanation
And if some pretty young thing on a celluloid frame
Is lying on her back and invoking his name
He might come and answer but it isn't the same
When your body takes the hit and your head's in the game
Don't you tell me what I need to know
To get these seeds and fertile fields to grow
Cos I'm a child of this own land
And I've made it by by my own hand
So far but here we are
There's poor mister pinstripe in church on a Sunday
Making a habit of getting down on his knees
Since everyone prays in a different position
And Saint Peter's keyring's got all sorts of keys
And you can make him open up that golden door
So the blessed crowd in like a pack of wild boar
And even all the angels would be asking for more
At the gentle sound of fabric as it falls to the floor
There's a buzz in the air like a temple of virgins
And something in the mood is sickening sweet
So now you are the master and I am the student
But don't expect offerings left at your feet
Cos every young prankster's got a trick up his sleeve
To cast out a demon, cause the devil to leave
But the devil's a trickster and you better believe
That he got to us bad back as Adam and Eve
-------
"Just shoot me if I ever get that desperate
Just put a fucking bullet in my brain."
You turned of the television with a sarcastic glance
And you went out to light a cigarette
I stayed behind and watched the windows get wet
With the rain
Closed the chain behind you as you step out the door
You won't notice what I've done for a minute or two
I hear you talking to yourself, fumbling out in the hall
Swear you had your lighter earlier today
Yes, you did, until I threw it away
Should've let it kill you
Kill you
Kill you
I'll kill you
------
I'm not surprised that
you don't remember
the way that you were when we met.
Your body was broken,
your mind was in tatters,
the sides of your face were wet.
And I was a doughboy
who'd just crossed an ocean,
looking for lands to call home.
No, not even God knew
the trouble we'd get to
with an excuse not to be alone.
You'd been with good men,
whose sole good intentions
just left you empty and black,
so I kept my promise not to be like them.
I never held anything back.
And you were my mirror
that showed all the old marks
I thought I'd hid under my breath,
and I was your bottle
you kept taking hits from
to remind yourself that there's nothing left.
Oh, Melissa, I'd never hate you.
I don't understand why you think that of me.
The war might have ended, but this battle's not over.
No, not by a long shot, take it from me.
-------
Tonights the kind of night where smart people are afraid to leave the house
You can see 'em through the window, fingers in the blinds, eyes peekin' out
Well, I guess I've never been too smart about any of that shit
And so something's going down in someone's basement. I'm in the thick of it.
There's a girl there I sort of know with a beer in hand and a shirt with a hood
She says "You didn't show up with any new scars tonight, that's good."
And as she's talking, she suddenly gets a phonecall from a friend
Who's high as a kite, says "I guess it all comes out the same in the end."
Some guys are piling up on couches just to see who'll be the first to drop
And a girl in bathtubs behind curtains are getting talked into taking off her top
Slowly, slowly everthing's becoming easier to comprehend
Except for how I got here, and how I'm going to be getting home again
[Chorus melody:]
And she wishes she was old enough to have hung with Kesey and the Angels
And she always points out how pretty the other girls are
And she thinks there's something romantic about old leftover matresses
And she always knows where all the best drugs are
And I feel like an encyclopedia full of completely useless information:
The exact dimensions of your bedroom, details of the barbarian invasion.
And you, you don't know nothing, but you've got a lot of heart
You got guys falling left and right for you, and that ain't even the worst part
Well, a friend of mine was growing mushrooms in his apartment's old closet
He had to grow them in shit, the whole place stank cause of it
And now he's gotten busted by the cops for being drunk in public
And the only thing he can complain about is that the uniform's a snug fit
Yeah, you gotta learn to make the best of really shitty circumstances
Somebody once told me that, then blinked and asked: "What are the chances
we'd both be totally in love with that song by David Thomas Broughton?"
Some people see so many omens, I'm not sure how they could live without 'em.
[Chorus melody:]
And she wishes she was old enough to have hung with Frankie and the old Rats
And she calls punk rock a crybaby but she sides with the working man
And she obsesses over the semester she spent out in San Francisco
And she drinks like a sailor, but she always recycles the cans
She said her friends where shooting horse now, on a pretty everyday basis
And it was starting to show itself in those chasmed lines around their faces.
And I said my friends were all on crank, so they came on real fucking strong
Yelling just to be heard, scribbling out lyrics to every Pere Ubu song.
She said her parents used to be Catholic, and they always ate at four
And her cousin's diabetic and is a total attention whore
I told her the crazy stories about my uncle and his fucked up friends
It felt good to be sharing, but god I wish I could really remember them.
So she told me her drug is people, and she gets caught up in the rush
Running back and forth across the line of not enough and way too much
And the next morning, I was cleaning and I found her fucking hooded sweatshirt
And I really ought to return it, but I don't know how to get it back to her
[Chorus melody]
And she wishes she were old enough to have hung out with Andy and the Velvets
And she loves flea markets, junk stores, she's always going antique hunting
And she never takes off the necklace she got from her grandmother
And she says as she leaves "You know I'm always waiting for something."
---------
The lawman's boot is firmly placed
On the apple of my throat
And the stinking mud is seeping through
The defenses of my coat
And to his mud-soaked companions
The lawman from the Bible quotes:
"Now is the time to cast away our childish things"
A wispy woman in a red shawl
Watches sadly over the scene
Picking out a mournful tune
From between an old piano's teeth
And the lawman puts a rotting hand
On her shoulder in her grief
"Now play the song that everyone one day must sing"
The preacher on the gallows block
Is fanatic in his speech
Casting over his parishoners
He says the time must come for each
And as his zealotry flies sticky
From his mouth, he looks down to me
"The bell will toll in hell now for you, wretched thing"
[Instrumental Verse]
A hooded man with one good eye
Slips a rope where boot once sat
"Smile, smile and be a devil"
He says and his teeth are black
"The fact you may be innocent
Sure never will change that."
He nodded, pulled the pole and left me there to swing
--------
Your nervous habits are so cute
You're playing possum in the waiting room
Spying on the other patients
All paper clips and fountain pens
Knotty twists and frayed loose ends
You talk like a double agent
I know that look you're taking on
I guess I've done something wrong
Maybe I called you by your true name
Green contacts for your blue eyes
Soak your hair in bleach and dye
There are some things you cannot change
We're all working for another boss
And someone's gain is someone's loss
But you can't see the difference
They would give you all they earn
It's not about what you deserve
And you don't know what you're missing
When we last spoke over the phone
You said fuck off, leave me alone
I'm sorry that I can't forget you
Cos I still see you everywhere
In that one's laugh, in that one's stare
You would never let me protect you
From that black familliar space
That's written all over your face
Plain as day to anyone who sees it
We don't talk now anymore
A scorched-earth romance between whores
I might have wanted it, but I don't need it