1. From A Balance Beam
2. Messenger Bird's Song
3. We Are Free Men
4. Loose Leaves
From A Balance Beam
There's a man holding a megaphone. He must
have been the voice of God. The bystanders claimed they saw angels
flying up and down the block. They must have been attached to wires.
I seen one laying in the lawn with a broken arm, so I called 911.
Well that's one less founded opinion. One more cause for a dispute.
So the street filled like a basin up with cameras and their crews.
And they washed away the rumors, leaving just the concrete truth.
It was a spectacle. No, I mean a miracle. And I fell like that
girl from a balance beam. A gymnasium of eyes all were holding on
to me. I lifted one foot to cross the other and I felt myself slipping.
It was a small mistake. Sometime's that's all it takes. Now
I'm staring at my wrist, hoping that the time is right. When the
planets will align there will be no planets to align. Just the carcass
of the sun and those little painted marbles spinning senseless through
an endless black sky. (And so it never started and it will never
stop just like I am and you are.) It was in a foreign hotel's bathtub
I baptized myself and changed. And one by one I drowned all of the
people I had been. And I emerged to find the parallels were fewer.
I was cleansed. I looked in the mirror and someone new was there,
but I was as helpless as a chess piece when I was lifted up by someone's
hand and delivered from the corner my enemies had got me in. But
in all of my salvation I still felt imprisoned inside that holding cell
that is myself. So I wait for the day when I hear the key as it turns
in the lock and the guard will say to me, "Oh my patient prisoner you have
waited for this day and finally... you are free! You are free!
You are free!" Now I'm staring at the sun, waiting for it to explode.
Because a day is gonna come, don't know when but it will come. And
we'll finally know the way out of here. And I will throw away this
wrinkled map and my chart of stars and compass, cracked. And I'll
climb that tree all wet with sap, to avoid the hungry beasts below.
I'll cut out my lover's tongue and sing of a graveyard gray and a garden
green. And we won't have to worry no more. No, we won't have
to wonder again about how this song or story ends. About how this
song and story will end.
Messenger Bird's Song
The kitchen is cold, but the coffee is warm.
And the sun is coming up. The day has just begun and your already
bored. Bored of cheering me up. Bored of calming me down.
Bored of drying my eyes, but there once was a time when you were the one.
You were the blue of the sky. You came after the storm. You
were the switch on the wall in the dark of the hall I'm still fumbling
for. Cause I'm lost in the black. I don't know where I am.
Arms stretched out in front and I'm calling your name just as loud as I
can. I know theres words that we will never speak and the questions
can't be answered easily, but I wanted to be easy so nod your head if the
plans have changed. Shake it, love, if they've stayed the same.
Smile at me and I will stay. Start to cry and I'll go away.
Just please don't leave me guessing. So you made me come, then you
sent me away like a messenger bird. So I circled the earth, blown
away in the wind. But I always returned with some new little song.
Some sad story to tell of a breif love affair with a girl I compared to
you and she failed. You said you don't want me to beg. Then
you said, "Get down on your knees." Cause you knew that I would.
If I do any good satisfying your needs. And I know all about those
things we cannot speak. And just so you know, well they don't bother
me. So you don't have to be worried. Just nod your head if
the plans have changed. Shake it, love, if they stayed the same.
Smile at me and I will stay. Start to cry and I'll go away.
Just please don't keep me waiting. Just nod your head if your mind's
been changed. Shake it, love, if some hope remains. Just say
the word and of course I'll stay. Roll your eyes and I'll go away.
Just please don't leave me guessing. Just please don't keep me waiting.
We Are Free Men
Well, the future spills its intangibles.
An unknown set of variables. A path that's splitting infinitely up
ahead. So tell me what's the use to pick and choose from what you
should or shouldn't do? That's time spent better sleeping in your
bed or wide awake in a shopping mall. Trying clothes on from off
of the wall, yeah. Anything to entertain yourself. Cause a
costume can be quite comfortable. It can make you feel more beautiful.
It can even make you look like someone else. But it's still you,
so there's nothing you can do. Like a bad habit, the one you couldn't
kick. There it always is and it's nothing that no doctor's gonna
fix. They pat your back bruised with their accolades. And all
four walls are a trophy case, but that doesn't make it any less of a cage.
But you can make it all less difficult by embracing the ephemeral.
Then you'd never have to worry or explain. Cause if it's really all
just physical then my memory's immaterial. So why then do I remember
you at all? But I do, I do, my friend. I've seen your face.
We shared a cup, I know the taste. Its sweetness is relentless on
my lips. So help me drink in everything that is. Like a freed
convict, drunk on redemption from the way I've been. Well I swear
this time that things will be different. Well, right and wrong, they
have never been that far apart for those who'd write that sentence where
you hang. We will be lifted up from all of this. Yeah, we will
transcend the insignificance of our existence. Yeah your body's gone,
but angel you will live. Now your body's gone... now your body's
gone... now your body's gone... now your body's gone... now your body's
gone... now your body's gone... now your body's gone... now your body's
gone... now your body's gone... now your body's gone... now your body's
gone... now your body's gone... now your body's gone... now your body's
gone... now your body's gone, but angel you will live.
Loose Leaves
There are stories in the soil, loose leaves cover
the ground. There's volumes in the forest, no one reads out loud.
If I could take them down off of that mountain shelf. We used to
climb, but no one tries to go up that far now yeah. We're all too
busy working, entertaining ourselves. Forty hours, television, and
prescription pills. Well, I take two a day to make my brain behave.
It never does but who's to say at least my doctor gets paid. So that's
fine, yeah come by. We'll take the afternoon off. We can kiss
and undress, or if you want just talk. Cause I've got nothing real,
just empty space to fill. And you're my girl. I like your style.
Just imagine all the time we could kill. And time's not poison, but
once you drink it all you'll die. So let's just sip it real slow,
yeah we can nurse it all night. Try to believe that once it's gone
we'll pour another round and come back to life. Come right back.
I guess I'm moving faster now or that's what they said. And though
some days still take forever I can't disagree, because it seems to me that
I wake up and sleep. Look in the mirror have no idea what happened
in between. But I remember counting days down 'til the year could
be done. So I could scatter all my notebooks on the prep school lawn
and disappear again into a summer's bliss of staying out, sleeping in,
and getting drunk with my friends. That's gone and I know that it
won't ever come back. I accept I won't cling to what I had in the
past. But life's a slippery slope, regret's the steepest hill.
Hope for the best, plan for the worst, and maybe wind up somewhere in the
middle. And I'm not saying that I know what I want. But I know
what I don't, don't want to rot in my room and never know what could have
been. Believe what everyone else tells me is true. Yeah, they
say, "True." They say, "True." They say, "True." And
they say... and they say... and they say. Yeah, they say, "True."
That's what they say. Thats it.