It's a new year
In an old house
With more technology you'll never understand
Break out your typewriter
With your thees and thous
Smearing old words
With your old hands
You'll call me Cassandra
I'll call you King James
And all we write is true
And all of it insane
But the changing of the seasons will forever stay the same
You say
The infantry's retreating
Like they knew how this would end
Did you hear the Germans lost the war?
I bet they could use a friend
Right now supper's getting cold
Right now God is growing old
Right now dialect is evolving
Outside this house
Or so I'm told
It's a real fear
For you and me
Burning clothing just to keep the winter warm
My fingers trace the gumline
Of a skeleton key
Not caring whether it could open up the door
The faces at the window
Are children in the womb
Black-eyed and still
But growing every day
You'll die on the outside
Or die in this room
Either way
Our infancy's receding
We're a heartbeat from the end
Did you hear the madmen lost the war?
I bet they could use a friend
Right now supper's getting cold
Right now God is growing old
Right now dialect is evolving
Outside this house
Or so I'm told
We're stockpiling warheads
We're stuck in the past
Death is art
Truth is beauty
And the first shall be last
You'll call me Athena, I'll call you Monet
When the world is falling down
Crumbling like clay
We're hiding in caverns
Forgetting our names
We dissolve in our mythology
Like blood in the rain
You'll call me the lion
I'll call you the lamb
I am lost in all you are
You're alive for what I am
April, We Can Break Through If We Try
You body fades into the backlight
The long day is ending
While somewhere it begins
Our fingers wind to one another
But you see a world between us
Twirling on the head of a pin
And April, we are not just two
You are not just you
And a thread runs through this
In time will I leave what's mine?
Will we learn to push the world away?
'Cause April this only eggshell
We can break through if we try
There is nothing real that separates
The vision from the eye
And April must we be divided
When effortless you read my mind?
For the singing hears the sparrow
And the blue gives birth to sky
And April comes to clean the winter
Burns the grey and black to green
In your breath I spring the forest wild
To reach beyond the screen
April do you hear my hearing?
Are the islands not connected
By some mythic engineering?
We can bridge the space between
I swear I had a dream through your eyes
And in the morning
I did not know who I was
We clutch to weathervanes and sundials
Praying for the moon to pull us
Closer into one
And April don't you give up now
Crying on account
Of the skin that binds you
I feel summer's coming soon
When the moths and trees and the heart entwine
You're driving
It's just after midnight, and pavement fades to dirt roads, cast grey by your high beams
And in a flash you see me: I'm waving to you so hopefully
"I'm so drowsy and I was hoping that you could drop me off at the stone house
That's over just two more hills
I've got to get home before my parents start worrying for me."
Between the kindness of strangers and the rumble of the road
There's a slow kind of remembering that takes years to unfold
Its in the dahlias by the ditches and the backseat of a car
Yes I am grateful to the strangers who have taken me this far
And as the trees soaked with starlight in time
Are replaced by endless crosses suspending electrical arteries
And streetlights and billboards for cigarettes, I say, "We're almost there."
You glance in your rearview and see just how filthy I have gotten from walking in darkness
Since God knows when
And turning you look to the house now ablaze in yellow glare
So you step out to open my door and to wish me well
It's freezing; yes it's absolutely as cold as hell
And red glowing hazard lights blink like clock out of synch
Are you all alone now?
Where could I have run off to so quickly?
A knock on my parents' door, a knowing sigh
My father will ask you inside
Ask you if the one to whom you had given my ride was all dirty pale and quiet with racehorse's eyes
'Cause you know that I've been gone since 1995
And you're not the first to try
(But I'm still alive)
Between the kindness of strangers and the rumble of the road
There's a slow kind of remembering that takes years to unfold
Its in the dahlias by the ditches and the backseat of a car
Yes I am grateful to the strangers who have taken me this far
Yes I am grateful to the strangers who have taken me
I thought I knew the sunrise from the steelworks
The grinding of the sky in red and black
I thought we were the chance collision
Blessed incision in the canvas
Pushed beyond color, into breath and back
So dance into a new world
I think I know the feeling of my own skin
I concentrate to listen to my bones
When all the while I'm just a pocket
A self-shaped hole cut from the breathing solid-state
A dualistic throne
So dance into a new world
When the ground is shifting from your feet
And the sense you talk is crowned deceit
When you dance past gravity
When the world will not believe
Then dance into a new world
I'm not stopping the car until I make you cry, I'll drive it all night
Over the border and to every corner and edge of the world
Every island and ocean boiling and blue in motion
I'm not easing the gas until we both can sleep
We might as well be running the engine
With never a mention that we're sitting still in the garage and nodding off (a mirage)
And there's no crashing until I see this through
If it's the last thing that I'll ever do
I'll make you feel one second pass
Where I am stone and you are glass
And you are broken when I crash with you
You're not dropping me loose without a fight to hold on for my own life
Though it's a mile below, all the while I'm digging my nails into gravity's ladder
Ripping your mind and matter
You're not walking away until your heart is torn, our tears are reborn
Falling together like a ton of feathers I'm pulling you down to the bottom where we'll be forgotten
I promise that there's no crashing until I see this through
If it's the last thing that I'll ever do
I'll make you feel one second pass
Where I am stone and you are glass
And you are broken when I crash with you
And we'll keep moving faster till you scream
Burning rubber into the end of the dream
The air is breaking round our heavenly speed
And what you fear the most is what I need
And what you fear the most is what I need
Falling together going for forever and never ending
And spending our lives for moments that won't arrive
When you're feeling at last and reeling so fast
Because I'll finally touch what lies behind your walls, I'll make them fall
But there's no crashing until I see this through
If it's the last thing that I'll ever do
To make you feel my heart's affect
We're smashing now, a flaming wreck
And we are broken, we lie misconstrued
The end is spoken long since overdue
And I am bone and you are glass
And the last is first and the first is last
All the searing smoke and the blinding flash
And the smell of hope, the taste of ash
And the gates will open when I crash with you
The gates will open when I crash with you
And you are broken when I crash with you
And you are broken when I crash with you
The hurricane that blew last night worked wonders
The house is torn, the line is cut; now we see with real eyes
And talk with words that matter and I am not your shelter
As the wind ripped everything I finally felt my lungs expanding
Walk away from the before and into now
Walk away out of the old skin when the old skin's drowned beneath the clouds
Walk away when all the world has blown apart
Walk away into the wet grass when the end is making new the start
Are you the same after the rain? Are you stripped too?
Or is your air overcome by the thought of breathing and perceiving?
Is there a way to make a storm from nothing?
We'd break apart the gallery and with the sky all drained you'd stare for miles
I'm lying out in the rain
I wait for the hurricane
To wash over me ecstatic and free
To help me to see what I have chosen
I'm crawling deeper in this hole where it's too cramped to move like you do
And where the echoes blend my words into a language of their own
And I think the corners I am turning dull my lantern to the outside
And the less that you remember me, the more this path is overgrown
And the way back is just a lucky break
That connects me to the dressing up of melody
The bite of infidelity
And I'd long to swallow one more old song
Pretending that I have a chance to make you care
About this failing solitaire
Where I'm in here and you're out there
Because I'm crawling deeper in
Into my own skin
Where there's no one to chase away
Or to guess the next thing that I say
I'm invisible to you
To your bird's eye view
I know the angle all too well
It's how I saw before I fell
But now it's not so hard to tell
I'm crawling deeper in myself
And these corridors are veined with every word we've ever spoken
And the story that they tell is just a wheel within a wheel
And every time I think I'm crossing into where you cannot find me
You are always right behind me, half inside me half unreal
I forget all the skies and crocus petals
A time without retreating like a refugee from such imagined treachery
Now silent, I'm searching out this island
Pretending that I have a chance to make it where
The morning's not recycled air
And you're more than a prayer
There she goes into the sea
This is aging; this is love; this is free
There she goes, she's airtight
Oh invisible subway; oh invisible lights
Oh invisible tilting heart and mind
Oh invisible, darling, your voice is breaking up
And out pours this night
There she goes into the sea
Where it moves like healing; where is tastes like mercury
But she'll get used to all the salt
If she's already hooked on the chemicals that call
Oh invisible bride where is your dress?
Oh invisible, darling, your voice is tenderness
And out pours this night
Fast-forward through the coral
Though bones of highways white
Here history is illuminated
Each fragment's like a sunken liner where rust and silver wait for me
And I'm a wave butcher, cutting, chopping
Here I come into the sea
There you go into the sea
This is losing; this is love; this is me
There you go, it's airtight
Oh invisible ocean, oh invisible sky
Oh invisible swimming heart and mind
Oh invisible, darling, your voice is still with me
And out pours this night
My reaction, my response
I'm a function in need of x
Ask me questions and I reply
I'm never first but I'm always next
And we stare in our eyes
Never blinking and going dry
Do you care more than I
Who will get the last word?
And if we trace back the time
Who began with the first line?
In any case it's not mine
Because these days I can only react
I'll never speak without your lead
And I'm your shadow; I react
I'll be the gear between your teeth
When you're spinning, I react
You are the neutron at lightspeed
Spring me open, I react
But can I find the zero point I need?
Can I change it all and then take it back?
It's so easy to shrink an inch
Or is this room growing even more?
And it's so easy to light a match
When you've been burned once or twice before
And when I swing blind in rage
I'm in search of the first page
And when I sing from the stage
Who will get the last word?
You're the one who creates
All to which I retaliate
But can I ever navigate
Another path than to react?
I'll find where aggression hides away
Where my own two hands hold sway
It's a bright and beautiful new day
I will act, I will act
Your reaction, your relapse
Out of love will grow collapse
Something somewhere finally snaps
And I will act, I will act
My dearest friend, take these books of mine
You always loved the words that dreamt inside
Perhaps they'll show you places I never found
My brother take these clothes of mine
In which I always looked so stylish and refined
They'll be much warmer here above the ground
And while summer is bright on the walk
Bending shadows like hands on a clock
Maybe I can find some shade under this tree
There could just be some rest in this for me
My sister, take all my photographs
May faces of friends and family let you laugh
And keep your memories happy and clear
My lover, heart, take these songs I wrote
Play them years from now when you are old
And perhaps someday someone will hear
And in this air so still and strange
If I close my eyes, will the wind change?
If you listen closely, you might hear me sing
Take all that's left, take everything
Open up your secret
Tell me how I might refract
For I am one
And one life in one time's a mirror that I've been dying to crack and let the world be more
Though I know in each act I open up a door
I wonder still at the labyrinths before that now lie unwandered and ignored
I could swear that I've lived as long as you
That I can imitate anything you do
But your hands are hundreds — I've just two
Spun from the clock's relentless core
I could move like blown air
Everywhere, omniscient and wild
I would be your brother lover father and child
I'd find a way to be foolish and be wise
And trace all of the seams in time's disguise
And at the end of the day I could blink my eyes
To reload another self once more
Now I'm hearing your footsteps in the halls
While your singing is arching over walls
Tell me, can it be really you at all
In skies and on the ocean floor
Last night I had a dream that you adored me
Last night I had a dream that I shone bright
The more I am at once to everybody
The more I'll be like you
The more I can rewrite
Here outside it's raining
It's wailing
I'm soaked to the blood
Somehow I know that you did this
It's your kiss on my head
Your dry ground under the flood
And if I learn to swim
Then you're still the sea that I'm writhing in
Defining all that I am and that I've ever been
And all whom I will never be
Is there a way I might drink of you, not drown?
Is there a way I might find the pipeline out
Or diffuse my body into sound
Becoming waves, becoming free?
I dreamt I was the air, that I was so strong
I dreamt I was a promise I could keep
I dreamt I was a film, I was a novel
A prayer for the impossible, a dire and desperate leap
I dreamt about a car of grease and metal
I dreamt I was the moment of its crash
I dreamt I was a fire, a shrieking kettle
A cradle and a coffin and a wolf among the sheep
I dreamt I was a priest without forgiveness
I dreamt I was a thief who could see God
I turned away my eyes to keep them human
And waking up I find that they've been stolen in my sleep
I dreamt that I had never loved another
I dreamt her heart was safe behind her ribs
That I could stop this war, that I could save her
That I was just a dream returning to the deep
Sing me like a lullaby
And read me like a book
You can steal me in an art fraud heist
Just tuck me underneath your coat
And if you want to load me on the reel
And blare a blinding light through me
I'll be a silent film and you'll play the organ
To go with the pictures I show
But when can I feel my skin again
As more than between blood and air?
I am what you tell me I am
You make me an endless text
And you are my projectionist
Give me like a wartime speech
And fight me like a war
Invade me like the Middle East
Just bounce me off the satellites
But the picture's out of focus now
The blackout's all over town
So make me now a candle bright
And push me through the power lines
But when can I feel my skin again
As more than between blood and air?
I am what you tell me I am
You make me an endless text
And I am what you think of next
And you are my projectionist
Shine a light through me so you can see
Sing me in a different key
I'm your diary
Who's reading who now?
And who's in whose skin?
Turn on your TV
Broadcast me everywhere I want to be
Lift up a rock and find me there
But when can I feel my skin again
As more than between blood and air?
I am what you tell me I am
And you make me an endless text
And I am what you think of next
In the burning theatre I am blessed
For you are my projectionist
Hiding something, love
You're hiding something behind your grin
So let me in before the rainy season starts again
Tell me something, love
Oh tell me anything
Reveal your hand
Show me what makes you glow like apple trees, like Tokyo
So please
Ask before this moment fades
Fast before I ask the same
'Cause if we don't, I think we know this room will burst
It will explode
Though every word is overload
Don't let this moment
Go ahead and speak until the world ends
Time has reversed
Now we are children and our eyes could swallow galaxies
Floating weightless, we are floating worldless
You walk a spiral across this buzzing sky
A language born of fire and butterflies
Ask before this moment fades
Fast before I ask the same
'Cause if we don't, I think we know this room will burst
It will explode
Though every word is overload
Don't let this moment go
Hiding something, love
You're hiding something behind your grin
So let me in because I'm hiding something too, and it's the same thing
I'm just like you
The world is new
And we'll be colliding with forever when you speak
Wishing is cold this year in Pyrenean snow
Or have my nerves been sabotaged and stripped?
And I can't hear you anymore
Are you now stone silent or are my ears clipped?
And I've been riding trains
Because I'm so afraid to drive
I'm whirling lifeless over metal tracks
Too scared to stay alive
And what paralysis is worse:
That from the world or from inside?
And where's the borderline at which the two divide?
Wishing could be the motion at the window's edge
Is it owl wings or my eye's mistake?
If dreams just hold me hostage to electrical codes
Then how can you enact them when I wake?
I chase the trains forever
Hoping someday they will stop
I see myself through windows
And he doesn't care if I catch up
What destination do I reach
Somewhere ahead or lifetimes back?
Oh either way, there's no escaping from this track
There's no escaping from this wishing that I were never afraid
And wishing these rails had never been laid
And I will be strong and I will be brave
And I'm right behind you, show me the way
Inside I am red but the sky is grey
And you're right beside me but further away each day
And I'm still riding trains
These leaves aren't as loud as I'd prefer
This machine doesn't love me enough
Tomorrow won't see last year occur
And is the sun too bright?
This wheel is not sufficiently square
Is there nothing else to breathe than air?
This ground is much too hard to tear tonight
You can't dance to this smell at all
This book just tastes like words
This house of cards will someday fall
And is the sea too wet?
These buzzing bees make too much honey
Why can't this holocaust be funny?
Your love for me won't earn you money, I bet
I'll take the world on my own terms
I want disease but not the germs
I want the moon to cling to me
So let your silence to sing to me
An endless endless symphony
Till all I lost instinctively returns
Your teardrops cannot change the wind
Your hands can't see the waves
The things I say can I not rescind?
Is every word a vow?
Why won't this house provide me rain?
Why can't this deafness hear me complain?
And why wasn't I told that love is pain till now?
I try to stave off your anger with feathers
And I try to sleep but the days bleed together
With a needle and thread I would hold back the weather
But the tide's coming in
And my courage was never brave enough
And my hunger never gave enough
And my abandonment never saved enough to start again
So I'll make the world on my own terms
Give me disease but not the germs
I need your moon to cling to me
So let your silence to sing to me
An endless endless symphony
Till all I lost instinctively returns
The leaves cover up all I've become
This machine has long broken down
Tomorrow is gone, today is numb
And the sun's asleep
Your wheels have carved a street so wide
And you've missed the point but still denied
In hopes somehow that all your pride you'd keep
You'll hold your breath and count
You'll stop at ten
And then need to do it over again
But don't bite your tongue
Come on tell me, tell what I already know
'Cause we're not strangers
Who'd sell our beloved discomfort for petty gold
And nothing changes in Hell
Its mouth is open, its eyes are closed
Its claws are lashing and its rage exposed
And I wait for you to revive my ghost
From where I fell
Where there is sound, there's life
Sometimes I act like this
To hear your shrieking prove that you exist
If you ran the world
We'd all be strapped in white jackets for feeling at all
But what you've got
Is just your black mortar, one way glass, brick and serenity wall
And because I'm not on your side, I'm a trap
My jaws are open, my ears are closed
I'm poised and still but ready to explode
But it's not like that I promise there's no code
And no secrets to unwrap
You can't hold your breath forever
Beneath the shelter of the sky
'Cause my reflection in your water
Will break the surface tension you've been swearing by
This is a different world with every frame of time
And time can see the living stillness you create
When you stop counting and you breathe
Your mouth is open, your eyes are closed
Your hands are trembling and your teardrops flow
And the moment rises to find us both
And it never leaves
In walks the villain of this tale
The door closing silent behind you
I smile and I offer you something to drink
In the hopes that a taste will remind you
That poison goes better with grenadine
That deceit's always lovely with lime
That bitterness can be so sweet
When it's served in the right place and at the right time
And we'll toast to a lifetime of happiness
And we'll catch up on mutual friends
Yes we'll laugh with good cheer and not mention that we're
Just a means to each of our ends
And by midnight you'll be so convinced
That all of our time apart was some mistake
That I'll sigh and I'll stand and I'll hold out my hand
Once more for your memory's sake
I'll hold you my love and never let go
I'll hold you my love and I'll never tire
I'll hold you my love by the throat
I'll hold you my love over the fire
So breathe with me, love; only love will work now
Hold onto my love like it was stolen
I'll burn with your love like I was Birkenau
I'll conquer your love like you were Poland
I'll act on my love like Pontius Pilate
I'll give you my love like I was Brutus
I'll radiate love like Three Mile Island
I'll prove you my love like I was Judas
I need a mantra
I'm trying too hard
I break the eggshell
And some Russian dolls fall out
Look into wanting
Look deeper still
And you'll see the back of your head
Looking down the filthy wishing well
And I learned about my brain
And oh, it made me smarter
I would break apart the eggshell
I would fall into the water
And I need a mantra
I need something I can imitate
Until I'm breathing like a fish
Until the purple air is white
These hands have spokes inside them
This body's branching
See that I'm trying too hard
Always landing, always landing
So make me invisible
To you and to others
I've forgotten how to read
I'm getting better
And now I'm looking deeper
I tossed a coin into the ocean
As this well is drying up inside
How these hands have spoken
And I smash apart the Russian dolls
And I'm all cut with slivers
And my blood is breaching like a whale
As the well dries up the rivers
Your body is branching
As I twist to eat the serpent's tail
I'm trying too hard
This joke just writes itself
Someday I will be reborn
Someday I will be reborn
And the earth spins faster at its core
The ground and sky each moving slower
A blind watchmaker's semaphore
Someday I will be reborn
Someday I will be reborn
And the world is beautiful because it dies
(Or such is the design of human eyes)
As sure as each ice age melts and dries
Inside of You, In Spite of You
I am in the air now
I am in your lungs
I am written
I am spoken by a million flaming tongues
I'm the lens through which you see
I'm the process
I am the key
I am synapses firing bullets from a gun
I'm the world's mystique
I am the words you speak
I am language
I am hidden memories that you seek
I am the sun before you see me rise
I burn still when you close your eyes
I am the soul that never dies when flesh is weak
I am inside of you in spite of you
With strength and sacred grace
But for all you do
I'll carry you now
From this bitter place
I am in your future
I am in your past
I'm the echo of your footsteps
I'm your shadow cast
I'm the heat you radiate
I am the fury and the fate
I am each beat within your heart from first to last
I'm your action without thought
I am the instinct born inside you
I'm the bones from which you drape
I am protective skin to hide you
I'm the pull that the earth exerts
I am the rain that stings and the snow that blinds
I'm the architecture of your world and mind
I am the dawn of ages
I am the days seen through
I'm final entropy
I am inside of you
I am the clouds that cover
Your way into the blue
I kiss with life to give
All this in spite of you
I split the atom of one second
Choosing history's lathe
Each word summons now the next
A master to his slave
Countless links
Within some silent chain
And time becomes the sediment that drifts to algae
Divorced from comets' trains
In the East a reflection
Of the Western sunset
North, South, pole to pole
Turn back in regret
And to the East I might stumble
To the West I would crawl
And if North is the winter
Then South is the fall
And if I had my way
I'd make the clock rewind
I'd live again that moment
Though I know I'll never find
The future that I missed
A parallel line
Where the world would be so bright
That it could make us all go blind
And if I had my day
There's so much I'd reclaim
The sanctity of motion
The neverending rain
The cardinal directions
All pointing to the past
Where realities converge
And for a moment, we're the same
(As always)
And magnets spin the compass
In an embryonic flame
Somewhere is the promise
Of an uncharted trail
With seven hundred branching limbs
And seven hundred ways to fail
To the East a reflection
Of the new moon in the West
Her timeless watch is quiet
Over tides of her unrest
To the North is the current
Of a man breathing out
Giving birth to the breeze
To be inhaled in the South
When the sky turns black and the floodplains crack and you cannot look away
Because on every side is the unstoppable tide in motion from the very first day
Will you fall down with your knees to the ground in the hopes that you will be spared
From whatever the wrath that may lie in the path of those whose convictions dared?
And when you're called to serve, will you have the nerve to do all that you know is wrong
Just to save your skin no matter which side wins, just to know that you were there all along?
Is it better to reign in a world of pain than to serve a cause divine?
We'll see who you are underneath darkened stars, there will come a time
And where does evil lie, in the heart, in the eye, is it a guest without a host?
And does your mind concede to what your body needs, to what a silent hunger craves most?
And bending word to the limb, falling out, giving in, will you see all that Earth would conceal
Below the melting land and underneath the desert sand? Is the desperate voice inside you even real?
And is it true when you stare into the sun you can see the insides of sight itself?
Is there a way to speak but not say so you'll know if words come from you or something else?
What do you hold in your hand, what do you understand to be only thine?
And are you ever free and can never be unclothed to the wind, uncovered to the bone?
Will there come a time?
But who am I to ask you how your lips will move your words
And who am I to know the way your fingers curl?
And who am I to wonder just what skin you've chosen this day?
And who am I to stand behind you and to claim I see your eyes?
We Could Have Flown Like Pollen
Somewhere between the ball and the chain
The resonance of an earlier pain
Begs to feel the angry wind and the rain
And don't you even care?
Somewhere between the mad and the sane
The mind gives in to directionless strain
With the way our thoughts begin to wane
Away from all the splendor they could bear
Somewhere between the seperate planes
Our decadance magnifies the stain
Leaving me naked to remain
And don't you feel the air?
Somewhere between the hand and the brain
Our dissonant steps fail to contain
They burden us with the heart of the slain
And now in this inaction we're ensnared
Somewhere between the heart and the vein
"Revolt" becomes the blood's refrain
To meld our bones to the earth again
To bring about yesteryear
Somewhere between the cruel and humane
As we fell on the path to an Earth so mundane
The clock turned as we tried to maintain
All the things that keep us alive, but they weren't there
We could have flown like pollen
Higher than the moon can see
But now we're sitting all alone in the world
Trying to write ourselves into history
We are half destroyed and paranoid
And fearing what might be
Lost unto a forlorn hope
And made up in mystery
See the way we fell astray
Dead until our dying day
Hold my hand and we will pray
For all in disrepair
Do you fear what lies in store?
Do you cry like you did before?
Is there trust left anymore?
Or shall we spend forever unaware?
Traces of our footprints through the mud
Lilacs folding back into their bud
We can climb a hill where time is free
And from atop there we can fly like pollen
Higher than the moon can see
The space between your fingers
The lack of water burns
The fear in you that lingers
Stalking all whom it concerns
The tempest's howling chorus
Sings the days we never took
As they come dying all before us
The closing of a book
I turn the other cheek
I'm dropping, I am one
Into the hands of nameless lands
To which you cannot run
But the ocean is your voice
It whispers, "Half of me has fled"
And now you're screaming bloody murder
Breaking promises and bread
Your words now crossing worldly borders
Strip my covered ears
The only thought that comforts
Is the hope in future years
That maybe you'll arrive here
With a heart and mind subdued
And maybe we'll remember then
The life that we pursued
The tide sweeps you away
But no further can you be
Than one night's sleep through winter
Time is nothing more to me
And the ocean is your voice
It's howling, "Half my life is dead"
And I am screaming bloody murder
Breaking promises and bread
Awaken the wolves
For my dreams have grown too quiet once again
Give me howling of footsteps
As time ambles drunk over tundra-glazed earth
Somewhere in the snow
Are the frozen tears and the teeth that battle broke
Twelve winters ago
When aging was living and murder was birth
Taste the cells dividing
All to come and all that's been
See the glaciers fighting
Melting over, pushing underneath your skin
Surrender your warmth
To find where ice crystals end and body starts
We walk the line
Between breath and wind and death and gravity
Awaken the martyr inside
And the ground that's solid cold and petrified
Before I open my eyes
Can you thaw this away and give my past to me?
Awaken the wolves
When the January moon needs lullabies
When the sun's bright passion cannot reach the skies
'Cause we're all alone here on the plains of frost
And when we wake ourselves, shall winter's memory be lost?
We ate our young and never blinked an eye
We carved the subway tunnels and prayed to snipers in the sky
We practiced medicine without knowing how to heal
We killed ourselves in dreams a thousand times, always believing it was real
We gave birth silently to jargon, metal, smoke
And mirrors that we kissed until they clouded up and broke
We fed a starving child with an apple's knowing taste
Denying 'til her dying tears the poison with which it had been laced
So father kill your daughter
Mother kill your son
Swallow up the universe
'Til all the killing's done
It happens when you slumber
It happens unaware
Out of every human eye
A hundred generations stare
If you lose your eyes you will see
And if you lose your faith you will believe
If you lose your blood no more will you bleed
And if you lose all your desires, nevermore will you need
If you lose you light you will glow
And if you lose your mind you will know
If you lose your youth no more will you grow
And if you learn to stand your ground, there'll be nowhere left to go
Come here to mend
What's come before will come again
Girls like me don't understand how we wind up Siamese twins
Connected at the neck, when you breathe out, our bodies breathe in
And girls like me don't talk about who's really in control
For when your mouth is open, we can see right down that hole
For all you know of skin and bones, the muscles, brain, and heart
Can you not learn the distance when we stand so close apart?
Girls like me have given up on lending out our eyes
For if and when you bring them back, they've shrunk another size
Your tiny tweezer hands are so precise but cold as steel
And girls like me are sick of being flesh they touch but never feel
For all you know of nervous systems, organs, and insides
Has science taught you nothing of what's underneath the hide?
And girls like me can trace the shadows as they fade away
Running from the sun and dying at the end of day
Girls like me can shed your body, lose this extra weight
We'll cut your throat if that's what it will take for twins to separate
Here and now it doesn't matter
The highway you have taken
For now as you awaken
You're underneath new skin
I'm setting you in motion
And opening your eyes
And underneath these skies
You'll forget all whom you've been
I dust away the plaster
From off your breathing body
You're touching your autonomy
You'll never be the same
And fingers grab at nothing
For the first time they are feeling
For the first time they are healing
As I whisper your new name
I sculpt your nature within
I am your Pygmalion
Go now into the world
Trial by fire
The passing of an hour
The splitting of a fraction
A chemical reaction
Is waiting to fluoresce
Your mind is still rewiring
The colors of the morning
The sound of hornets swarming
The glow of my caress
And have you seen the outside
The world that lies beyond us
Where streets are paved with jaundice
Where innocence forgot?
And have you seen the future?
So hard is it to hold you
So hard is it to mold you
To something you are not
And can you live on your own?
I give you up, I turn to stone
Go now into the world
Trial by fire
Here
Now
Start to move
Uncertain with each step you take
What is gentleness beyond my eyes
Beyond my bodyscape
Turn and look one more time
See me brimming with saltwater brine
Away you run
Away I give
Sleep not as an island,
Pillar of the trenches seven miles deep
But ground yourself with Jacob's ladder,
Rocks and bridges holding back disease
And when you cannot move
Let Earth then move herself to hold you up
For if you push away her arms
They'll not return
Do you feel the blood divide beneath your skin?
Do you know a thousand battles wage within?
Do you see your own reflection when you stare into the rising water at your feet?
Alone, you cannot win
Blink if you can hear me
From across the untold miles where proud you stand
Hold on to your humility
Hold on to your life, like I hold on to your hand
Hold on to something stronger than blood
Something stronger than words
Something stronger than empty air we breathe
When weaker is all we seem to be
Everything will go tonight
Earth will overflow tonight
It's all in who you know tonight
You were born into the world a situational Pariah
Spoke in tongues, misunderstood like some unrecognized Messiah
At the bottom of the sea, I was bathed in your forgiveness
Now the world has split in three, leaving me your only witness
Is there proof you ever lived? Is there something more transcendent?
Will these moments die with me? Are they no so independent?
Could a child in five hundred years be given recollection
Of your smile, of your eyes through divinest intervention?
I will shout it from the mountain when your soul is taking flight
I will tell your tale in blood, I will keep your flame alight
And when I breathe away my strength, I'll find you in the white beyond
And from above, we'll make the rain to water mortal dreams at night
Do you feel the blood divide beneath your skin?
Dividing all to come and all that's been?
Do you see your own reflection when you stare into the blinding sun?
I am there
I am here
I look down upon every summit far below me
Snow untouched by fear
I am in the air now
Your mother kept you safe
So safe you weren't born
Your mother keeps you still
In the mind of the forlorn
And never to conceive
And never to allow
The thought to cross your mind
Where is your mother now?
And somewhere in a dream
Your mother's still eighteen
And holding onto this world
That we called obscene
The union of the snakes
With coiled bodies bare
Bring scissors for my skin
And for your mother's hair
She'll never speak your name
For fear of looking in
To the past that was
For that which might have been
Beneath this scape of sun
I claw at every minute as we
Clutch today
In disdain of tomorrow
The holiness of now
Which we will soon betray
And with a sickening hope
I dangle from the modicum
Of chance that has run
Two steps ahead always
It mocks as I
Lose track of everyone
I could have turned my back
To make myself more nothing yet
So give me comfort now
It is the last that we will ever get
And as the stars arise
To call the end of time
With midnight near
I look into my hands
The only thing I've held
Is foolish fear
I turn my head at last
Now giving up pursuit
With what to show?
I've been outrun but given this,
The only joy of our regret: to know
This could have been yours
"Prove yourself to me, " you say
A skeptic waiting for a faulty word
A sole mistake, a lapse of timing
I release your arms to show you trust
To make the miracle, to will the rain
To part the seas, to press the wine from water
But without faith, I am nothing
To demand is to deny
For an instant you will see me
As I flicker from your eye
And while you hold your eyelids shut
The buttermilk will boil to blood
And onyx black, the net of sky falls to reveal the light beyond
And still you swear upon your heart
That you can taste the wind and hear the ground
Beneath you, yet you still refuse to see
With your doubt, all is comfort
We are all as we appear
No more questions left unanswered
No more wonder, no more fear
Nothing is beauty, nothing's feeling
Blood where there once was a soul
So I ask you, prove yourself
Make me believe that you are whole
Final word of now and then
Dream of silvanite again
Dark and bitter and I consider
My need to scatter and beat and batter
Within
Final thought from here on out
Sleep in silence cry out loud
Say with smile it's not your style
Run to you father the sting that bothers
Your mouth
When you ran away alone
Burn your britches and burn your home
Sour taste is pulling hard
And a three board layer is all you've known
When you ran away alone
Sell the world take out a loan
And if the train goes off the track
Burn down everything you own
For me
Little game of give and give
Dream of how you wanna live
Freeze and harden your secret garden
Lift the fetter now you had better
Forgive
Little by little attention caught
Sleep like it's a passing thought
Sting and cripple an ocean's ripple
Of boiling water is all his daughter
Sought
Your voice everytime
Making water from the finest wine
Under my eyes
Under my clothes of basest cloth
Under the impression of what's no longer there
Under my power
Under what's nothing at all anymore
Under Heaven and under the ground I stare
Under your sea
Under the water of your words
Under attack by the struggling will to live
Under your scalp
Under the rest after a burst
Under my spell I've nothing more to give
Right below me, twisted, buckled
Pointing fingers through my face
Chewing on my screaming crying
Plea for Jezebel's embrace
Down the stairs I move
O'erlooking selves of all I've been in thought
Kissing and seducing
All the selves I wish that I were not
Writhing like a piston
Cold as oil lubricates the path
Burning down the schizophrenic
Self-reflexive rapist's wrath
There, with fire in my hand
I throw it on the crowd below
Twins of faces, plus one other
Shocked and helpless, call out,
"No! You cannot do this! "
There in flame they smolder
As the hemlock would
As bones and sinew melt
I tell them,
"It's all for the Greater Good"
For now a deity I stand
Before my judged and blackened kin
Save only one, a different face
Was cleared of her new virgin skin
Feel the grass within my dream
A million years it's grown
Unconscious lies the human form
Now no longer alone
This, this is the end of darkness
This is the gift of the wise
A silent breath cuts through and
Squalls the sand from off my eyes
Waking from eternal sleep
I'm waking from eternal sleep
Beyond the night so infinite
And through the gulf where no man stirs
I'm waking from eternal sleep
The stars will fade though I will keep
Their memory as I embrace the sun
Like breathing thoughtlessly in time
The cycles of the moon now pass
Alive again I witness who will slumber on
And who, like me, shall wake at last
All the dreamers quiet as the rays
That served as herald to the days
As now I see the path I trod
Seal off its entryway
Always wishing for something superlative
Craving for a distinguishment long
To break once free from the mediocrity
That's spread its seed to where it doesn't belong
And now my disease is pulling at your bones
With my contagion I should have left you alone
The speechless stir beneath my throat
Will prate on end words of pain by rote
And with the knowledge that breaks me down tonight
I turn on feeble feet in hopes of flight
So now you're wanting something more as well
Looking for a higher perch and view
Seek to escape from the art of failure
That I allowed to spread from me to you
And now your sense of life is gone
By all you thought you'd overcome
The guilt it swarms like hungry flies
Around me till its victim dies
You've made the last commitment weakest ropes
And now I pray you'll turn your thoughts in hopes
In hopes of flight
She got out of the cave with the shadows alight
All tied down and blinders to narrow her gaze
She reached for his hand and then into sight
Came the holders of statues, their backdrop ablaze
And he led her up to the grass and the night
And both of which snagged in her hair
And her haze was teary and beaten with answers not right
"No question could pose what the answer portrays," she told him while crumbling out of her plight
And didn't she now that not all of her days
Would be free from walls that had held her in tight?
He brought her back after he'd gotten her praise
Now tired and numb like a lady named Bright
She's faster asleep than the light of the rays of the sun
And tomorrow he'll use all his might again to lead her into this maze
Slow motion drips between folds
Driest tales of tears untold
Scrounge and panic empty hands
Empty heart pumps empty sand
Weighed down in a dormant feel
Pinch a nerve to know it's real
Pregnant with a star tonight
Melt my tongue in speech so slight
Eyes aglaze your satin chilled
Skin and face of that I killed
In your gown and wrists are crossed
Spasm shake for that I lost
There in plainest view I turn
Sudden scream as past I burn
I deny the whole of you
Nothing else for me to do
I deny your beauty
Blocked entirely
I deny that you existed
Disused piece of me
And now in this my darkest time
My memory's gone and with my mind
The rumble of this prayer to gain
All I need to start again
But words are weak as I am proof
That fools use words to speak the truth
In riddles, lies, all indirect
But when can I myself connect?
And I alone stand not so tall
I block out one, I block out all
Erase a notch, we're back another mile
Tonight we dream the beauty in denial
Today a child was born
From a womb of confusion
And in a fit of unknowing will
Was given to despair
A knock on the door
A skip of her heart
In a fit of uneasiness
Was hoisted in the air
And seven days float on
Written word becoming apt
A hidden looking glass
Begging you to go away
Roll the tongue, another year
Customary closing on
This January is long enough
It was too late yesterday
Did I speak to soon?
Caterpillar crawl down deep
Stupid boy are you
I know to take but not to keep
The chrysalis has broken through
In my stomach scratch a wall
Dying boy are you
Left alone to cry and crawl
Withered boy are you
Skin is thin and wanting leave
A filthy boy are you
Ever more than you perceive
Last night I dreamed about black water
Pulling me in with its hands
The ocean's breast was cool on my face
And the pharisees' words were in the sand
Saying "Take the life of the sea
Take the light from the sun
Take the breath of land
With the light and the life and the breath
Follow me
Follow me
Follow"
In the event of all consumption
In the face of all your fear
In the antagonistic pleading
It came upon a midnight clear
In the event of all that broke down
In the cells that hold your skin
In the macabre static automatic
Pulling of the pin
And as one side becomes another
Rattled skull in chemical restraint
Of all that covers me with layers toxic
Like the blood of saints
Masking inward I recall
Fall forget for get to fall
In the shaking of a looser piece
The fall apart, destroy, release
Inhibit soul that I police
Like no repeat and metal feet
And as one night dissolves another
Battled to a primate-like response
To all that threatens me
Like gas and trenches, buried haunts
Breaking into every ounce
Flesh will rip and nothing counts
I can see in all amounts
Well I woke up in the morning and my hands were solid red
And I looked into the mirror at a man already dead
Yes I came into your house with a cloud before my eyes
Now I stand the morning after with your screaming in my head
Oh, your closet door was open so I thought I'd step inside
And I waited for a weakness just to pummel through your hide
And the scales on scales made the hissing of the snakes
Even louder than ever with a tongue split down the side
Yes your throat was looking hungry and your throat was looking sweet
So I crept into the kitchen just to grap a bite to eat
And the lights were off and bloody and I caught you by surprise
And the murder weapon glimmered as it came home nice and sweet
Oh the scales on scales, like the shining and the tight
And just between the two of us, this could be your last night
And you'll wake up yesterday with a headache and you'll say
Of the slithering distraction, it was quite all right
And we danced into the parlour like two newlyweds would dance
And I held you off the ground in a firm but loving stance
And your eyes were slowly closing and your head was bobbing low
And the growing pool below you consummated our romance
So I left you in the ballroom, you were white as winter snow
For the life of me I could not quite remember where to go
Because every time I looked, all I saw were printed words
And the ceiling turning yellow as the symptoms start to show
I'd be thinner, I'd be taller
Go clubbing in my collar
With skin pale as a moth
Dressed in black, I'd go creepin'
While the normal folk are sleepin'
If I only were a Goth
With my hair up, I'd look fancy
Like Siouxsie and the Banshees
With silk or velvet cloth
Dressed in boots, never sandals
And the room would be lit with candles
If I only were a Goth
Yes I'd wanna die
From the bottom of my heart impure
Would I like another clove? Well, sure
And after that, we'll go listen to The Cure
I'd pretend to be a vampire
Like in stories 'round the campfire
I'd suck your bloody froth
Yes the thing I'd be best at
Is impersonating Lestat
If I only were a Goth
In my casket purse I'm toutin'
Einsturzende Neubauten
And pagan hymns to Thoth
Yes the world would be depressing
Over death I'd be obsessing
And this corpse that I'm undressing
Would be sexier, I'm guessing
With my diet I'd get scurvy
And I'd worship Peter Murphy
If I only were a Goth
I didn't want to believe the way
The sky fell in as the wilted choke
The sleeper relieved of consciousness
The dreams relieved of all their joy
The snake relieved of venom tongue
The need to hold fast to everyone
And as the birthday girl opens up her box
Her life is relieved of all
But the narrowest corridor in the way
Of a final and ultimate goal
Windows and shutters and lowly creatures
Waiting for you at the pole
I forget how many ways to go
There were at this journey's start
But all I feel is tooth and nail
As they sink into my heart
I though I'd gotten over this
Day after day after a hundred years
What good is it now?
I tremble to contain
Everything promised and never received
Everyone said that they wouldn't leave
Stop me if I let my tongue spew fire
Kill me if you cannot reach me
Stop me if I'm doing something dire
Kill me if you cannot teach me
I thought I would endure it all
I cannot see what i had wanted then
What have I done?
The stains of yesterday
All of the time I was lying down
Backwards and forwards and bleeding sound
But I'll stay again
I can wait some more
I can stay right here for what's in store
I can hold my own
Glowing like a rose
I will stay right here until you go
I cannot force the word
Collected heap to smell
I'm living what you had heard
I live the lie that you tell
The truth is best to leave alone
Insipid and cut
Look how we've grown
Touch me across a modern tongue
A change a pain under my thumb
See how I've been profaned
See now the lover stained
Sea of bounty holds
See me bought and sold
A shadowed mystery
I know it's better than that
But never white and sent
And rather not intact
Take a breath
When you're falling out of anger
When the danger is ahead
Lost somewhere deep behind the backs of my eyes
You tell me things but you don't tell me why
A freezing layer comes foreign to me
Groan expanded same tale not landed
All that mattered in an instant shattered
Believe in all of matter scheme
You think you know of what I dream
Fried and scattered I'm nothing like I seem
Bittersweat across the tracks
Knife is plunged into the back
Calculated risk fall through
Telling me what not to do
The sky is falling
Seen in the morning in the deepest ice
Fed upon by the starving lice
A freezing layer comes foreign to me
Reprimanded I cannot stand it
Life in soil encrusted boil
To see inside my huddled heap
You think I dream when I'm asleep
Wrapped in coil there's nothing I can keep
When I'm soaring free as a pig
When I decide to build again like a mountain's eye
The graphic on your palette twist
Distort like someone else's sky
Placing of a bone resulting
Fracture push your brows in deep
Leave behind the residue
In purest form of freebased sleep
Gasoline tugs at the feet
Of men with sand and wax for bile
Thick it dries and blocks the path
Of air not free but standing trial
Planted spike into a wall
And boots now fill the hole I made
Climbing upward just to see
The freakish feast and dead parade
All the steps down stair and road
Illuminate reality
But what they do not know
Is what they cannot hide from you and me
A needle opens skin but keep on
Pushing to an exit wound
Severing muscle drop and fall
To floor of sound haphazard tuned
It boils flesh in vapor form
And rises to the cramping ceiling
There condenses wait to rain
On shell of broken heartfelt feelings
Nature of inaction has been
Spurning forth this waste of life
The aiming low precipitation
Eats away so ruthlessly
And slays with twisted knife
The callus left by years of steady self-destruction
Has finally dried and cracked like thinnest clay
The irritation pours out from repression
These are the things I thought I threw away
Strange how you cannot change when you want
But see that I am no chameleon here
So all of this comes back to who I was
Before the wind had blown away my fear
No matter what you do to avoid them
Your past and problems will not wander off
And like a boulder on the path to self-corruption
The light between the cracks is not enough
You call unto the walls that you construed
The walls that break my shattered body's fall
You cannot undermine what I am feeling
The only thing I want is to feel nothing at all
Digging in your lithosphere
Why aren't all the answers here?
Physical life is a trap
I can make you disappear
The scar of harsh rejection opens wide
It's been so long and here is comfort cold
The ones who summon noble introspection
Are now like famished wolves with flesh to hold
And only once did everything subside
Perhaps it was my one and only taste
Of life through eyes of nobody defined
Pull more and more till winter comes and I have been erased
And so am I, so here am I
Lashes pulled all out barnacles smother skin
Pry my swollen eyes another day begin
Stay awake or go insane a favorite youthful spree
Find escape or live in pain, there's something here for me
Most arcane and obsolete are palette captured thoughts
Dress myself in lace to feel a time that Earth forgot
Lifting up my skull to build the strength I need ahead
The strength that once brought all to me has all but left me dead
Rapture in the rupturing
Of all that I don't need
And force the heat into my neck
As proof that you agreed
So drink of this
Everyone believes, everyone will see
Peel my arms away, another day to be
Sitting in polarity, poised against another me
Slip myself beneath my feet, I've lost and broken free
Vultures circle high
Just pretend you're not untied
Hide your flexibility
One more simian tendency
And a shot rings it's all of you
Suddenly you're good as new
This in eyes of gross misled
Cough up lies that I've been fed
Let the sable blood of the idol show the false and strong evidence
Passion reigned a thousand years, the cries of rejoice and lost innocence
All refrain join in the pain ahead
Can't relax or find the flax you said
You'll see - You'll see
Show me truth and desecrate it, hold be back, temptation burning
Strength and your dexterity, the deftly slip of painful learning
Covered nail and hypnotic baleful
I never had my pale skin
Tighter hold her throw her away
All but wisely chosen stay
Let the congealed blood of the idol sizzle through and corrode this bridle
Holds me in and blinds my eyes, but I live to serve, to be despised
All turn in and join chagrin ahead
Can't behold the words of old they said
You'll see - You'll see
Strapped to the bomb, you're weightless for today
Falling a lifelong headless path dismay
Blind of sound, arms tied around
Counting down until you get your way
Fat is fried and cut your head
Is there anything I should have said?
In the read and yellow time away
Hold up high your head and say
Time to end it all
Was this of my will?
And if so my God
Do I want this still?
But you fool yourself
Smile false and tough
You suffocate the speed
I never had enough
It's no use, the damage has been done
Floating between the sewer and the sun
Vacuum round you leap and bound
To gain the moisture stolen from your tongue
Earth is well in sight below
And there's no one there to see you go
Attention starved in final act
The ticking time not turning back
She fell asleep before she got inside from on the road
As devils drove around her at a thousand miles an hour
The dreams of lazy wishing and of promises bestowed
Were just enough to give her hands unlikely guiding power
From left and right the silent witness watched her as she flew
No cage around her body to protect her from the world
A lover in the form of barriers that quickly grew
Embraced her as a lover would embrace his wedding girl
With glass he kissed her on the lips the wishing-dreams now changed
To hyperactive craving beyond wishing known on Earth
The gravitation of her slow desire rearranged
The planets and the insects and the wealthy demons' worth
And in that half a second that she finally had her want
Not waking, she was like a queen above the summer tar
With dream-built sceptre to her side and fools there to her front
She grinned, that falling empress for the fifteen meters far
There's no way outside; you're here with your beliefs
And the change in action which was meant to end the grief
See you scratch the walls 'til your hands are stumps
Make the world conform on this notice brief
Never before and never again
Will they toss the righteous into the lions' den
Atlantic sea of blood as the sun draws near
The sanguine boiling ending this, the final year
And sure as you had hoped, the entropy reveals
That the so-called truth is parallel to what you feel
All on the mortal plane, nothing more is thought
And that you can't see is all that there is not
How the child has grown to this human mass
So relentless in his quest for that which seems to last
And the pillar great, moved from man to man
All but one convinced by the world at hand
Across an armament of human skin in the midst of what is real
And what is for us to feel and act upon, ever to justify
And you succeed, never a price too high
And the sand is falling faster, and it's falling free
Covering the great divides that be
And the ground is rising closer and the sky grows not near
Loving you, the final year
You followed me, I follow you
And with new language you leave me adrift
To find and swallow you
Into this continental rift
But would our song spill ancient text
When our paths are crossed, our power lost
On railroad tracks or slave ship decks?
Or has your love become neglect?
And somewhere there's a memory
A truth that lives in lies
An echo of the way you knew me
Under foreign skies
And will I live in hiding
Between the silhouettes?
Will you remember me
When everyone forgets?
Do you know me anymore?
Wasn't I your comfort and your god?
And weren't you the shore?
I called you home and cried for you
But suns rise up and shadow falls
Over rooftops, years, and eyes
All in the hopes that you'll recall
Oh wasn't I a god to you?
I promise that I'll still be there
Even when I haven't got a prayer
Just a lonely stranger in America
But I'm still here, oh God I'm here I swear
When the heart and the blood start to slow
When the nerves melt away like the snow
This infection runs its course through me
So much more than mere infirmity
When the throat closes of its own will
I can't laugh, I can't breathe, I am still
Be my healer; please don't leave me here
Beneath the storm cloud and heavy atmosphere
Someone find me
Someone cure me
If I'm not too sick to cure
Medicate me
Moderate me
So that I can try once more
Tried to sit up in bed, was too weak
Tried to form the right words, tried to speak
I can listen and I can see a bit
You can touch me if you don't mind it
Tried to give to the world, only took
Tried to keep courage strong, but it shook
Never told you what it's like to shout
And sterile silence is all that comes out
I curse the day I bought that phonograph for you, my dear
For there are times I swear that it's alive
I chase at night the whispering from the music room so clear
But I'm mocked with silent scorn when I arrive
I try to play Caruso but the needle skips the groove
While calypso and Ravel keep coming back
And there beside that damned machine, you lie and never move
I'm cuckolded by metal and shellac
It comes to me in dreams and it declares "I'm Joan of Arc—
You can burn me, but I've power from above!"
But I fear it's not a dream, and you'll be swallowed in its darkness
It will one day speak your words for you, my love
I tried to throw it out but back again the trashmen came
They were ashen white like they'd seen Father Death
And they told me that it cried aloud and spoke to them by name
So they returned it, ran, and prayed under their breath
And every night I long to coax you from that phonograph
But it's drained the appetites I once fulfilled
Its gaping mouth, obscene and wide, turns every tune to laughter
And its arm, it waves commands to have me killed
It comes to me in dreams and it declares "I'm Joan of Arc—
You can burn me, but I've power from above!"
But I fear it's not a dream, and you'll be swallowed in its darkness
It will one day speak your words for you, my love
And now that you've gone deaf to every word that I could say
I'm reaching out the only way you'll hear
I beg into a microphone for you to turn my way
And with my voice on wax, my body disappears!
So play me on your phonograph and swear that I'll be yours
Though your heart and voice can nevermore be [one/won]
Just drag that needle on me as I spin my loving course
Dreaming only of your kiss
All the charms of yours I miss
As I pop and as I hiss
Spiraling into the abyss
Oh my God, it's come to this
We've been undone!
Put another record on
Play that music all night long
And by the break of dawn
We'll be in love