1. |
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I don't know what I could say that might change
The mind of the right.
Ideologies strain.
But thinking and feeling feels suddenly strange
On the day after election day
Well they'll treat me with kindness,
I'm white and I'm straight.
But I know not what shelters
My way from our way.
Just that it's all for each other.
We have to relate.
Ah, but this is no phase.
And I'm genuinely afraid.
Oh, wicked resolvers
Won't play and can't wait
To turn what is true
Into chemical waste.
You who martyred a ten-year-old
To slink at the gate.
When they scream kill, I
Always lose sight
Of everything off stage.
We're off-script.
I've lost my place.
So I can't tell anyone to live for the day.
When I'm just a singer with words, but no way
To make sense of the day...
All the days after election day
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2. |
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Nobody knows.
Nobody cares.
Just walk after nine
And escape up the stairs.
Put on a record;
Dissolve into the air.
Become one with the music
As you write out all your fears.
It's the best thing.
No, it's just the next thing...
It's the next best next thing.
It's the nights when you stay up too late
When you know it's the morning you encapsulate.
And it's the haze of the dawn
When you're writing your songs
When you're still just a little asleep,
Writing the pens of their ink.
Do you think that it's cold
Or warm on the road?
As you forgo all classic mystique.
And you're bribing yourself not to smoke in the street
As you fall into the grass beneath your best friend:
That haunted oak tree.
Is it haunted? Hey,
Do you feel okay?
Oh my.
My angel calling forth.
Ah, Ladder Song can't calm your nerves
Since you're running off with a dancer.
Like an apple, sweet inside and outside, her.
So you devour it whole.
No throwing of cores.
Trees treating teeth like they're nothing but teeth.
Nor a casual plea.
But, of course.
So following your idle path:
An artist, fervent, and full of the last
Dreams of a moment delivering cash into hand.
Well, you're a man of diction and dash.
And you revile decisions, complete and relaxed.
So what do we make of the leaves?
Are they browning and falling too far into spring?
Or are you just walking to see
The world after nine in the evening?
Nobody knows.
No.
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3. |
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Angel on the street corner laughing.
Saving all the film of the starlings,
And shaping her wings
Like they were from casual flings
Instead of divinity passing.
She's a mighty thing;
A wild and rotten thing.
Just open your lungs and sing, my love.
I'll tell you all the words of...
All the words of...
A penance on the article clamors.
Oh, beast of burdens, you're bitching;
Your canopies stammer
Out from tongues outstretched instead of
Lighting incense and candles,
And clearing the scandals from
The air of the hammered stench of
Olympic rings
Or classified dreams leaked.
When you're...
When you're in the airport sleeping.
I bought a pen for two dollars
And I'm writing on napkins.
Thanks for asking how I've been.
You know I love to talk, kid.
And besides, what's inside is dying to live
Next to a band and four-part harmonics.
Or least some attention for these guitar licks.
Oh I know that they're both right in time.
When you're in the airport sleeping,
Wonder why are you in the airport sleeping.
It seems like you're alone.
And when you're alone...
When you're alone, you see the ghosts.
When you're alone, you see an angel on the wing and she's laughing.
No she's not.
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4. |
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Well I studied Quoth The Raven
And imagined it could fly.
And realized it had no purpose
But to live and to die.
And in my own life,
I've seen the fathers lie.
And I've watched one try
To bridge the space between two sides.
So when the world dries up
And the seasons shift,
Reminding us of...
Curb yourselves.
Just watch the holes in your shoes
And the soles start to rub.
So move.
And move.
And move.
And move to New York City, child.
And go wild.
This life is crazy.
This life?
It ain't easy.
Take your time.
And stop eating meat.
In time...
Move to New York City, child.
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5. |
The Ornamental Crown
03:45
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Disassemble your thinking -
Real and profound -
To the interception of wishing
And knowing the sound
Of rain on the windows.
Smoke on the roof
Until time passes by
With your watch stopped on truth -
The truth of a situation.
A calm ease of condemnation.
And nobody knows
That the water flows
And speaks up;
Turns the dial from their station,
And onto your own child.
To listen, alone, child.
So passing the joint
And hitting it down
As the crutch sits,
As my sides split
And my arms shift
And my eyes drift.
Now I'm laughing
And seeing the ornamental crown
Sitting atop the head, round.
And around and around and around
In Washington Square.
Where it elicits no stares.
But follows the shots of your cigarette's glare:
The lightness of burning from the filter to the tip.
Where the cherry sits
And the herbs split
And the smoke drifts
And my eyes shift.
Now I've been...
No, I've had to have said this before.
That now, I'm asleep on the floor.
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6. |
Empty Seats
02:59
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Discipline your differences;
The light for which to see it.
I'm away now.
And only if you mean it,
Will I turn to speak it.
Open doors now.
And though these minutes make up
Days to days,
It is the seconds that escape now.
I'm wide awake now.
And precisely where's my mind
Depicted through my eyes?
Oh, I see enemies where friends used to be.
And vice versa. We...
We belong to empty seats
In a theatre.
I could get you all in for free.
So try to remind yourself
That kindness can
And reason can
Be the only things that stand.
No no no
I don't know.
But it seems to me
That the only thing
Standing in the way of singing
Is your pocketbook
And your money-clip that bum took.
So discipline your differences
And see them with your eyes.
Oh, and live long.
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7. |
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Dispositions handed in the mind of criminals
Attacking front doors, or the window by the ocean floor.
Said the only difference is that they can offer more.
But not more, in a sense.
Like I said, just a little different.
So the bass dissolves to humming
And the drums are draggin' back.
My words are drowned out by my own guitar's attack.
But I know that it is all needed.
No one needs another harmonica rack,
Or a man all alone in a ten-gallon hat.
It's the opinion of a police state.
Just a nervous tick of insanity's fate.
I took the last track
To have the last laugh.
And in the pocket of my slacks...
In fact, it's the only way
You can make my dignity sway.
So take my words out of my mouth, onto a plane.
Revolve all you can.
Recall the better haze.
My first mate? She's a doll.
And I'm the ankle weight.
So dissolve your paranoia like it's never understood
To be the classic depiction of a rabid Robin Hood.
To steal from the big boys...
Make them know you really should
Have given dimes or given time
To at least the folks in their neighborhood.
That's where they could've made
Their own mistakes,
And never rapped.
Forever good.
No, always...
No, always...
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8. |
Such a Night
03:33
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It's such a night.
We're rolling across the ocean standing upright.
It's like we glide.
It's such a night.
We're falling in real love this time.
And so, the Right followed our lives outside.
That said, to reach as far back in history as you can reach,
And tell me I can't see
That it's good for you
And bad for me
And catastrophic for the majority...
It's such a night.
We drink until the morning light,
And write down our minds
With a pen we dipped in turpentine.
To dry out my eyes
And laugh like it's all a lie,
Watching men deny their fellow Man crying.
It's only a party
And You are not the We.
We weren't invited, see?
And the wine is drinking fine.
But I try to at least treat myself right.
Seems like everyone else should fall in line.
But it's such a night:
Like a movie you keep rewinding
'Cause it makes you cry
In all the ways a movie tries.
With sorrow and grief,
To laughter and teeth
Displayed proudly for all to see
That it's such a night.
It's such a night.
It's such a night...
Good morning.
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9. |
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Oh darlin', it's just a thunderstorm.
Don't be scared.
It's quite normal for this time of year.
Or is it?
It's but February, isn't it?
And each and every day
I try each and anyway
To claim
That I'm doing anything
But paying attention.
I'm just not one to march in parades.
A soul's instinct is to yell and be brave.
And I ain't.
No, I ain't.
And I've nothing pointed to say that I can profess
In a hundred eighty characters or less.
And the president respects
Just that he's the actual, living, elected president.
But a tool to be blessed
By satan's own caress.
My heart is skipping beats.
My soul hurts literally.
And darlin' what do I see?
Darlin' who are we?
And what do we wanna be?
What do we wanna be?
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10. |
The Best Again
05:35
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Take a blue sky
And shield it from your eyes
As the snow flies.
Where's it coming from?
There are no clouds,
Yet freezing rain is falling down.
And the same old sounds
Are eating at my mind.
There's a red snake;
A quarter-century's resting place
For a bad day
Now drifting with the moon.
I'm a dream song
That you forget when you wake up.
Something begs fate the way I do.
I'm a cold breeze
You wish would up and cease.
I'm a smoker's wheeze.
My lungs are coughing up.
Now I can't see.
Seems the sign you hold
Says rest in peace.
My mind speaks
A similar truth as you.
So where we goin'?
Why can't I escape, child?
Escape child.
To everything you're trying to find
In a upwards climb.
Are we the best again?
When were we the best again?
So I'm a bold shout;
A pessimist who's fallin' out.
I'm an old doubt
You're still clinging onto.
Can you not see these basic truths?
They come to me.
And my histories may repeat.
They often do.
It's a freeway stretching forth and back for days.
It's a trying age.
The only thing that loves.
As my heart breaks for a country never finding its grace.
Just an empty haze of smoke and flames and glitter bombs.
So I can say
That four arms help me masturbate.
It's a funny thing, these glasses and this beard.
I'm a Roald Dahl.
The ocean's just a parking lot.
I'm a worse call amidst it all.
So where we goin'?
Where we goin'?
Why can't I escape, child,
From everything you're trying to find
In an upwards climb.
Are we the best again?
When were we the best again?
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11. |
Curtain Call
02:53
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(Instrumental)
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Dad's Typewriter New York, New York
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