Your boots fall from the bed to the floor
You slowly turn the lock on the door
You never know what you’re in store for
But it’s just another season in hell
Living in a two star hotel
Your soul’s the only thing that you haven’t been able to sell

It’s a long hot summer of sweet descent
It’s a long cold winter of discontent

You tap the keys with an absent mind
Your pockets full of spare time
But you can’t find the words, much less the lines
Now you’re just another drowning man
Holding back the sea with your hands
All those loud love letters and pretty proud plans

It’s a long hot summer of sweet dissent
It’s a long cold winter of discontent
It’s a long lean season of unpaid rent
It’s a deadline

And now you’re living like a man with his hair on fire
Pawning every promise to a pledge of desire
We speak the same language, Arturo and me
How you gonna sleep when the truth won’t set you free?

There’s a breeze in from the sea
To wash away the dust of your transgression
The sea gulls wheeling overhead in black and white
Seem eerily like priests attending to your mad confession
Hooray!

There is a star that bears your name
A sad, reluctant, amber flame
I lay here, holy on the sofa
But then your pale and trembling feet
Two-dozen floors above the street
Shook me wholly from this coma

And ain’ t it funny how the love we crave
Seems just like money now, so hard to save
And then it’s dumbstruck, goin’ up, 22nd floor
And then a short climb, two at a time, through the fire door
And you said, “who the hell are you?!”

There are no stars that bear my name
But I am up here just the same
Your sad reluctant new companion
I’ve heard them say, “Hey, don’t look down!”
I can’t believe that that’s the best advice that anyone could hand out

And why do all our dreams end up this way?
I guess it’s none of my business anyway
So I won’t interfere, I’ll sit here and whistle you a song
And if it’s in your key, feel free, you can hum along
And if anyone comes along before we’re through
We’ll say, “who the hell are you?!”

(Suddenly)
Nothing but stars for miles around
(From the street)
It’s a long way up but a short trip down

Before your heart sinks like a stone
Think of the ones left below
If not the ones you’re yet to know
Give them a chance to love you..oh

Turn around, please come down, I don’t get it
Turn around, please come down, don’t let it
Turn around, please come down, I don’t get it
Turn around, please come down

Think twice, close your eyes, take my hand in your own
And if you step down, turn around, I will walk you home

I would leave here
But it’s all I’ve ever known
I feel like a ghost town
Right before all the people have gone

And you wouldn’t know it, to look upon me
The quiet, desperate dreams that I own
But every morning, yeah she calls me
Back to the warm bed that I call home

Though I’m sleeping
Even still I’m not alone
Five in the morning
And he’s calling me on the phone

With clear instructions and sad seductions
Don’t you know he was born to it
You can punch the ceiling but it won’t stop you feeling
Rush out in the street and pull your collar up around your ringing ears

Some are born to serve
Yeah and others they’re just born bad
Some are born to late
Yeah and others they’re born into sadness

Some are brought in
And some, they fall in
But don’t you know I was born to it
With a fragile vision of indecision
A tour van and a duffle coat
An empty pocket, a crumpled note
From someone whose name I can’t recall
In a town I wish I’d never seen

Break my coffee cups and burn my spiral notebooks
Snap my pens and shave my pencils down to nothing
Lock my cds in your old man’s liquor cabinet
I won’t tell if you won’t tell a soul

I’ll be going soon
And I don’t know if I’m coming home

With a name unclear
You could disappear among a million stars
In collector lanes
And commuter trains that feel so cattle-car anonymous
While the memories and the poetry
Attest that we were here
There’s a counterpoise
There’s a little voice that whispers in your ear.. “well, maybe not.”

But I can boast, you’re not a ghost, no, you’re a miracle
All down the lane I hear your name, fragile and lyrical
The telltale hints… your fingerprints

All the long sustains
And the phantom pains that we still feel but never
Dare to talk about
Bare to let’em out, above the sports and weather… comatose
Every moon and sun
A quotidian tugging at the fetters
Of your little seams and unspoken dreams
Like those unopened letters…undisclosed

So if you bleed, and if you leave well, I’ll shed tears for you
And though it’s grey, if you stay then I’ll be here for you
But if you go…I hope you know

I’ll see you before I wake
And in every nameless breath I take

Of my high ideals
That were only real, reflected in your eyes
Just a tune remains, like an old refrain
A dusty lullaby left unsung
All my words deployed
Like a stranger’s voice, drifting lost and languid
The eponymous, dark and ominous
Trips like a foreign language on my tongue

Just once again, call out my name so I can bury it
This little corpse is just like yours
Why should you carry it?
And we’ll defame, and betray those names that failed to honour us
(they’re only hollow words)

Because it’s so, you’re how I know I’m not anonymous

They say that it’s traumatic when you’re born
I don’t remember ’cause I’m older now
Just like a peaceful dream you were torn from
That haunts you in your waking hours

I don’t know why it’s painful when we grow
But try to keep in mind that it’s only fear
I think sometimes forgetting what we know
Is what carries us from there to here

And I know this isn’t much
But it’s almost everything I know
At times it itches like a scar
Or hums like a radio

Why do we get wounded when we love?
She sang my name and I made her cry
And I will be laid into my grave
Never really understanding why

And I know this isn’t much
But it’s almost everything I’ve learned
Sometimes I wave it like a flag
And sometimes it’s a prison term

And the rain comes down
Harder than it ever has
Till a single second drowns
On the end of your eyelash
And the simple truth resounds
That our time goes by so fast
From the frightening first until the sweet sacred last

I’ve heard them say it’s lonely when you die
There’s no other time we’re so profoundly alone
But I know with you by my side
Anywhere I am is home
And even when the secrets we confide
All dance across my fading eyes
I’ll try not to be afraid
Just kiss me when I close my eyes

What’s with my radio?
I can’t understand
What’s with my radio?
I think she’s seeing another man
So we don’t talk anymore
Time is money and the talk is cheap
But sometimes late at night
I hear her singing in her sleep

What’s with my radio?
She’s all about the bottom line
What’s with my radio?
She used to be a friend of mine
But she’s got a new lover now
From somewhere far away
And every time a word pops out
I hear him telling her what to say

I’ve gotta turn that girl around, turn that girl around
Turn that girl around, turn that girl around or walk away

What’s with my radio?
She smiles for the rank and file
What’s with my radio?
Man, she used to be all over the dial
But now when the programming starts
Yeah, that’s when the story ends
Is she trying to break my heart?
When’d she stop singing to my friends?

Somebody turn that girl down, turn that girl down
Turn that girl down, turn that girl down
Why can’t you turn that girl down, turn that girl down
Turn that girl down, turn that girl down

There’s a kind of shrewd deceiver preying on the weak and the slow
There’s a kind of true believer – mad, bad and dangerous to know
But here’s a kind of Hollywood ending – they’ll be the first ones to go

Waving and smiling
Scratching and climbing
Nickle and diming
Waving and smiling

There’s a kind of pure obsession – easier to start than stop
Your own personal house of Usher, crackin’ up from bottom to top
You walk the streets like David Duncan waiting for the other shoe to drop

Waving and smiling
Scratching and climbing
Nickle and diming
Waving and smiling

With a mind like a roller-coaster, careening from career to corrupt
This rickety architecture is all that’s holding it up
Offer your arms up to heaven and pray to god it all stays up

Waving and smiling
Scratching and climbing
Nickle and diming
Waving and smiling

How dark, the darkness had found me
But how lightly your light surrounds me
Your eyes flicker like the sun

I am a cold, shivering coal car
You are a warm, shimmering polestar
And your eyes flicker like the sun

Flicker like the sun that casts my shadow so long
Light caresses dark, until it’s gone
Night’s deep daydream done
Shade’s shy shimmer, shone

Your eyes flicker like the sun

I’ve never been too graceful at this
You’d rather seal this deal with a kiss
The kind that brought ’em down in Gethsemane
Someday we’ll laugh about all of this
Until that day boy, put up your mitts
And take one on the chin in alacrity

Bruises like foreign currency
High-risk exchanges of urgency
That never seem to bring around acceptable returns

And just like Dorothy Parker would say
Well, it’s no shame to call it a day
But must you wipe your feet before you leave
And after all those hours and days
Of needless scenes and tragic parades
I watched you submerge like a submarine

And your semantic marathon
Ain’ t worth the paper it’s written on
If I had known I would’ve bent an ear to Louis Mayer

All your duplicity
Is firmly planted in the ground
Your pretty perjury
Is pushin’ up the daisies now
I’ll sing this eulogy
In ecstasy

I’m fine all things considered
You’re signed sealed and delivered
There’s really nothing more we can do
Than step out of the black and into the blue

Blue will be the colour of the sky
And yellow was the colour of your lies
But golden is the colour of surprise as I walk away
Silence is the sound of things unheard
And violent is the sound of lessons learned
And deafening, the silent sound of words that we never say

Hey there tragic one
I saw your ghost in Kensington
The sly sentry of the alleyway
A wounded soldier from the bad old days
And it took me somewhere
I haven’t been for years and years
Old appetites like souvenirs
I turned around, you disappeared
Into a street steeped in silence
A sweet peace and quiet

The lights never go down
A thousand shooting stars in Chinatown
Reflected in your eyes electric-blue
A kiss lingers like a deja-vu
But all the lovers crash
And echo under the overpass
They lie pinned beneath their memories
A million colliding destinies
Stain the street, pierce the silence
The sweet peace and quiet

We cursed a dishrag sky
We vowed to change the weather
You donned your widest eyes
I said never say never
And even though we lied
We swore we’d stay this way forever

Is it funny how
You seem just like a rumour now?
A conversation that I overheard
The frail echo of a foreign word
Is it funny or sad?
Sometimes we just walk away
No bittersweet remembrance day
Why do you think that we do that?
To defeat peace and quiet?
To cheat peace and quiet?
The sweet (you don your widest eyes)
Peace and quiet (I’ll say never say never)
The sweet (you don your widest eyes)
Peace and quiet (this time we’ll change the weather)
This time we’ll get it right

Your t-shirt said 1994
That may as well have been the day that we were born
I met you then like Bogey and Bacall
Cutting lines of m.d.a
In a bathroom stall
And you smiled your smile
And I soldiered on
And we made it home just before the dawn

Those were the days I’d believe anything
When the phone would knock and the door would ring
With a stranger’s voice from the bar down the road
Or the jail, or the morgue
Or emergency
But they stitched you up
And they sent you home
Back home to me
Back home to me

What happens out behind those dumpsters and bars
Below the underwater green dashboard of strangers’ cars
I never ask and you never tell
I guess it’s just as well
That’s how we got this far
All the snow is white
And the church bells ring
Like a cruel satire of everything

Are you really going
Looks like you’re travellin’ light
You took my pocket change and the rest of my life

Don’t make me say I love you still
Don’t test my humour or my goodwill
Don’t make me look into that face of scars
Like a constellation (full of dead stars) (of dying stars)
Still flickering
So terribly
Then going out
Are we going out?
Or just flickering?

The circus freaks and malcontents
The Trotskyists and the troubadours that I call friends
With sleight of hand or
With tender reticence
Declare their independence

If the minute you’re born
Till the day that you die
Feels like one long, unbroken road
Of compromise
Well there’s a detour from this grey path you’re on
You’ve just got to hang on

While the city slips to sleep so sound, so sound
All the pretty hipsters pull you down, down, down,
Say, “there’s another shade to paint this town”
Paint this town… or burn it down

The hearts on sleeves
And friends on floors
Like casualties make it hard to believe
In the end of the war
But if a dull peace makes you happy kid
You’ll be the first one that it ever did
So don’t let go, no, just hang on to your Id
Jump off and hang on