Every Day
Wide awake sleeping
Something’s wrong
It’s lost inside of us
Let’s stay up until dawn
We’ll let the words burn like fire up the drapes
Are you encasing some souls
In the crud of your being?
Are you attending your love
While you’re forgetting your own face?
Push the meaning to disaster
Wrap the dirt in glossy plastic
My skin glows red in the bloody rain
It steals my colors all away
My limbs fall like lead
This is my life every day
Steel azure
If you make it
So somethings sway in the meaning
Let’s stay up until dawn
We’ll let the smoke start to shift our subtle frame
There’s no trick to the psalms of the life without stopping
You forget where you’ve been and your vision shifts to blurry
Push the meaning to disaster
Wrap the dirt in glossy plastic
My skin glows red in the bloody rain
It steals my colors all away
While I’m looking at the sun
Is this my life every day?
HUH!
I push the meaning to disaster
I’ll wrap myself in glossy plastic
No turn on red do you have the fare?
All my colors washed away, a long time ago
Because I’ve been through from the start
Take It With You
One day you’ll have everything you need
One way to get everything you need
Burning options never bothered me anyway
To drown, to have everything you need
To brown, to have everything you hate
You got no feelings
We’ll forget it this time
There’s a fashion to that way of life
But I can’t get there
If this is your world
Then take it with you
One way to have everything you need
One day you’ll have everything you need
Due date’s overdrawn
But there must be a reason to set myself up this way
If this is your world
Take it with you
YOU
Take it with
YOU
I have a passion for a new way of life
But I can’t get there
So if this is your world
Then take it with you
YOU
Take it
Take it with you
House of RatsOne will
Secrets arranged went on your darker side
Do want
A custom way of living with reality outside
Watching for something
The House of icons wraps my soul
But we’ve always learned to live
One way
The sound of a window slamming
Much too far, I understand my lot in life
When it’s all, and it’s all, mapped out
And we’re watching the ceiling
In the House of icons we are rats
The world’s outside, I will be waiting
And we’re watching to see through
Without stealing the water
I will be waiting
From you
Watch Your Signals
I met another one who would rip my eyes right out
Just to get ahead in the 9-to-5 bullshit
I just can’t figure it all out this sick attack
Who are you anyway?
Am I alive?
Watch your signals!
You’re out of line
You’re out of line
You’re out of line
You know the men you know them
They’re laced up infinitely tight
Another job well done
Here’s to the heavy handed
What does it feel like this death-in-life
Is this some suicide trap or maybe a little blind?
But you’re alive!
Watch your signals!
Cuz you’re out of line
You’re out of line
SHAKE IT
AHHHHHHHHHHHH
At a party for the blind
Please let me leave, leave this behind
Too many strong handshakes
And padded shoulder blades
If you can think of just one out, one out, one out
You’ll be down again
Because I’m alive
I’m alive
Watch your signals
Because you’re out of line
You’re out of line
Wake the Witness
Best seats on a bullet subway
You’re leaving home in a window seat
On the way to something precious
On the way to something to gain fame
Did I hear something?
You went and slept with a Tommy gun
You’re ripping holes in your paper lantern
Beating time with another stranger
We don’t dig!
We’ll blow the whistle
When the stakes are pulled
I’m awake
I’ll wake a witness
We’re all part of one incision
We all have something to say
An exercise in clothed expression
A closet case, a skeleton’s worth
What’s wrong with a fantasy?
You can’t say it but you can’t believe it
Fade to black and rearrange
What show do you belong to?
We don’t dig!
We’ll blow the whistle
When the stakes are pulled
I’m awake
I’ll wake a witness
Wake a witness
We don’t dig!
We’ll blow the whistle
When the stakes are pulled
I’m awake
I’ll wake a witness
Now
Fragments of glass
To fluid motion
Every day a new set of styles
A single sigh recalls the meaning
Of all those blunders
And some new ones too
And I see that now
Do you?
A station cry for looks and honor
Co-dependents both
But true
It’s happened before
And I always wonder
How my mind wanders
Searching for more expression
And I see that now
Do you?
I see now that
I’m still reaching for
‘I love you’
I can see that now
Can you?
I can see now that
I’m still reaching for
The rest of you
One Way to the Bottom
One set of rules I often follow
There are too many ways to see through
Lay a certain trust lose all the meaning
That doesn’t mean they lose the truth
One way to the bottom
Is all I see
I’m living sideways
Sewing the cuff to my hand
Stares cut my throat
A perfect cadence
For pacing headstrong through these days
My life is washing away
With a drip of sand
I’ll wait and see
Wait and see
If I’m just playing in my own head
I never see it
Still I often wonder what it means
Signs of our kindred leave us angry
Four-letter names ring so true
One way to the bottom
When the light has gone
I’ll see it through
My life is washing away
With a drip of sand
I’ll wait and see
Wait and see
If I’m just playing in my own head
My life is washing away
With a drip of sand
I’ll wait and see
Wait and see
If I’m just playing in my own head
Almost got me!
Ahhhh
How to Behave
Your eyes, blue and gray like the weather
I’m getting tough looking through all the clouds in your face
I sit and watch you crying
Through the silence that we’ve made an institution
Hush words and regretful days
And I feel ashamed because sometimes I like you a lot
You treat me like a knave
And I’m not falling in love, I’m learning how to behave
I watch you blinking photo images
Of what it should be
Different in each frame
A second doesn’t show you when I’m trying to explain
The thing forgotten
Feel like the thing is me
And I’m not insane
Cuz sometimes I like you a lot
Nobody’s really changed
And I’m not falling in love, I’m learning how to behave
And if you’d asked I would have told you
I’ve never minded feeling alone
Maybe nobody is to blame
But I’m not falling in love
Just learning how to behave
How to behave
Retro Visionary
HEEEEY!
I can’t fake the future because i know the past
Call me a soldier of mediocrity
I’m not impressed by your lofty words
Of being saved from a burning Earth
That’s when my tolerance blows
No god’s gonna save us from ourselves
There’s something else inside to answer for me
Retro visionary
And I know what I’ve seen
I’ve seen enough of the agents (??)
Who hate themselves
About a fiery future for the sake of wondering
And the light at the end of the tunnel
Might burn a hole through the back of my skull
But I sure don’t need the date and time
I feel like we got a little bit more control
So if I thought this wasn’t my life
I’d have left a long time ago
And I’m not afraid to answer for me
C’mon!
Retro visionary
The past is all I see
Retro visionary
That’s me!
It’s all in what we choose to be
Hey! I’m a
Retro visionary
I’m not afraid to see
Retro visionary
That’s me!
Awww, and I’m not afraid to see.
City’s Insane
I’m still stuck here in the middle of the scene
Same people I’ve known for years
Trading lovers with them all
On my way to work
I still ride past the same streets
I just start out from different parts of town
We take each other for what we’re worth
In the ending, one more down the throats of the insane
Couldn’t matter much anyway
Believe me
The pressure’s on and
The city’s insane
My job is to live here
Poison through my veins
From the open air
My head is heavy, my heart is clear
We were always wrapped in
Circumstantial sheets
Sweaty and never laundered
And it’s such a simple life
To take the things I need
From the people
Who care the most about
What I haven’t found
They’ll take me for all I’m worth
When they’re leaving
One more down the throat of the insane
Couldn’t matter much now
Believe me
The pressure’s on and
The city’s insane
My job is to live here
Fashion cuts the veins
That will never heal
My head is heavy, my heart is clear
Believe me
The pressure’s on and
The city’s insane
My job is to live here
Fashion tips the scales
That were never fair
My heart is heavy, my head is clear
And if I can’t live through it all
I never planned for very long
Better Class of Living
I am looking for a better class of living
The one where everyone knows you’re out my life
I can tell all the bullshit you’ve been spreading
So thin
I feel like I’ve been raped and filled with sand
And I am crying for some things
Like answers to these times
And you cry for sympathy
Do what you want to
I can’t feel you any more
So I’m the moving coil at the heated center of your strife
Why is everything always straight up or straight down with you?
Feel like the rain and the water skin of steel
The Teflon coating is rusting through
I would cry over some things
Answers to these times
And you cry for sympathy
Do what you want
I can’t feel
Goddamn
Wooo
I can’t feel you
OW!
written while tucked into a booth at (the now-defunct) Coslow’s restaurant, while eating an order of waffle fries cooked by Leroy Bach of Bowery Boys fame, and later Wilco fame.
Stark 