Track Listing
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1. Taboo
There’s a gallows in your eyes
Can I hang around a while?
Scratch that itch and burn and twitch
And dangle from your smile
‘Cause when you dance like Salome
With my head upon your tray
You’re a devil spawn in blue chiffon
A Satanic Doris Day
You get up close beside me
And I get a heart attack
The angels have all gone to find me
And they’re never, never coming back
I’d hate to deceive her
I said I’d never leave her
I click the hammer on my .45
When she clicks the receiver
Loving you is so taboo
An emotional tattoo
Burnin’, wailin’, heads and tailin’
What am I gonna do?
‘Cause loving you is so taboo
An emotional tattoo
Burnin’, wailin’, heart is a failin’
What am I gonna do?
2. Hey Valerie
Hey Valerie
You’ve forgotten my number
Or so it seems to me
Blackouts and apathy
Hey Valerie
You’re so “fuckin’ groovy”
All angst and attitude
Like a Mike Leigh movie
Are you real?
You don’t know how to feel
You only know how to steal
Dirty regrets from a red glass heart
Hey Valerie
The dirt gets in everything
In our poems and in our eyes
Grime stains and alibi’s you give
Something you’re generous with
You shouldn’t shit where you live
Your clothes stink from the lies you’ve lived
You’re playing hard
You’re playing hard
You’re playing hard
You’re playing hard to get
Mind and body
You offer up like wine
To feed me bleed me
Fucking with my mind
‘Til I’m hating every day in every way
Valerie
You need friends like mirrors
Who’s the fairest in the land?
It’s all tens and zeros to you
And I can be that way too
A carbon copy of you
Your lying eyes to see through
But, that would never do
And now I’m coming down
Can’t get my head around
You left me lost and found
Judas, junkie, clown
Judas, junkie, clown
Judas, junkie, clown
3. Motel 30
There’s a grenade under his desire
And he burns like a stopwatch on fire
The fuse is short, the countdown’s on
And he’ll pick up all the pieces after she’s gone
He’ll pick up all the pieces after she’s gone
When she’s gone
You’re gonna drink like a wasted frat
And kick your feet like a spoiled brat
You made your bed now you’re lying alone
And you’ll pick up all the pieces after she’s gone long gone
Motel 30 is a desperate shout
And if you check in then you’ll never check out
You feel like a hound, you look like a pup
And if you let it get you down then you’ll never get up
Get you down
Down, down when the pity’s on
Some kind of new-age Ponce de Leon
You’re drinking fear from a wooden cup
And if you let it get you down then you’ll never get up
Paranoid null and void beaten down
Tired of having you around
I know you I can’t believe it’s true
So, hand me down my walking cane
Don’t wanna hear you spout that bullshit again
If it’s too old baby, you’re too loud
And you’ll feel more lonely out in the crowd
You’ll feel more lonely out in the crowd
In the crowd
You’ve gotta get with the party plan
Or better move your ass old man
Live your life and live it loud
Or you’ll feel more lonely out in the crowd
You’ll feel more lonely out in the crowd
4. Lucky Riverboat
5. Wrecking Wall
Sometimes I think
Therefore, sometimes I am
Sometimes it stinks
That I don’t get the whole plan
I’ve gotta clean up the attic
Ya, I’ve gotta take out the trash
All this baggage
It really burns my ass
I bleed, I fall
I wait by the wrecking wall
I scream, I crawl
Lined up at the wrecking wall
My head is full of
So many dates and places
A catalog
Of thoroughly useless faces
And that’s why I can’t sleep
Sometimes when I go to bed
I’ve got all this nothin’
Dancing around in my head
I bleed, I fall
I wait by the wrecking wall
I scream, I crawl
Lined up at the wrecking wall
Life’s written down in headlines
With letters twelve feet tall
It’s full of facts and deadlines
On the wrecking, on the wrecking
On the wrecking wall
I bleed, I fall
I wait by the wrecking wall
I scream, I scrawl
My life on the wrecking wall
6. The Tame, The Half-Born, The Wild and You
If Carolyn called me up today I’d hang up the phone and walk away
It’s not that I don’t care anymore
But time changes locks on a lot of doors
And I know what you’re thinking and it’s true
Sometimes there is nothing you can do
But there’s a time that I recall a purple street in Lisbon
She was speaking dreams to me and I thought I was listening
But I was fifteen yards away before I felt the distance
She cried in Augusta street and stared into the windows
And I know what she’s thinking and it’s true
Sometimes there is nothing she can do
Carolyn is tamed
All those years and all those tears
Cuddling her insecure
And shaking like a child and feeling helpless
But maybe I share the blame
Peter has a fan club he’s a whiskey hating Christian
And he’s in love with everyone as long as they keep listening
And there’s a hole in my old faith where he belongs
But, the whole of me has never been that strong
Peter is half-born
With one foot in and one foot out
A princess on a barstool
Anarcho- Commun- Liberat- ingratiating stranger to me now
Close friends and passerby love affairs and suicides
Sex and drugs and crash ‘n’ burn
Decisions politics and prostitute religions
Fucking at the movies or fighting in the street
Christopher’s a scapegoat ’cause he lives like a poem
And they want explanations but I just want to know him
Not for what he claims to be or what they say he isn’t
Just because he’s got the balls to make his own decisions
And sometimes the pain he’s feeling is so real
Sometimes that is all I need to feel
Christopher is wild
With fire-escape guitar afflictions
Different lives but shared addictions
Late night taxi, Frank Black happy birthdays
And blood-pact butchers knives
Amsterdam, the sex museums and the New York City subway
Vancouver in November, and Montreal on Monday
We’ll get a fix in Union Square we’ll drop at C.B.G.B.’s
And if we can’t find salvation there, we’ll stay home and watch the TV
And I’ll be your disciple if you’ll be mine
And we’ll make love in the moaning summertime
‘Cause you are beautiful
7. Three Penny Operator
The night just taunts me
And the morning isn’t mine
I’m kneeling at the monument of hate you left behind
And lying next to you
Still feels like pulling off a crime
The blanket’s stained with guilt
When your dreams are full of wine
There’ll be a pistol at my head
Either now or later
Bullets preying at the temple of a three penny operator
You can see the Kamikazes
In the lovers that you pick
She pulls neurotic rabbits
From her basket full of tricks
You lay with one eye open
While the other gets some sleep
You trust that woman like the R.C.M.P
‘Cause she’s going up
A down escalator
It’s a running gag, she’s a three penny operator
Walk the moon-soaked doorways
The fresh air will do you well
Fill a jar up with pennies
And secrets you don’t want to tell
Keep your pockets full
You never know when she’ll return
When the keyhole clicks and the handle turns
Who’s driving this thing?
There are spys
Working inside the love that you thought was bulletproof
And every time you smile with your eyes
Your throat feels a noose
But, I don’t understand
I don’t want to be your hangman
No, I don’t understand
I just want to be your lover
At least for tonight
Or till the stock-market changes
Two cents worth from a three penny operator
Beeswax, cinnamon and L.S.D
My friend’s got pains where his butterflies should be And
The branches are all twisted in the leaves of these trees
And the taboos that have been lifted don’t give me any ease
So it’s one shot for now and two shots for later
Freezing in Tequila like a three penny operator
8. Blur
Where are you now?
With flood-lights down
I feel two thousand Redwood trees inside me
In hollow ground
My mind’s a blur
A spinal spur
Can’t feel my feet, below, behind, bewildered
A holiday
D.w.i
On a Friday night
A blue torpedo full of willing victims
With hollow eyes
A holiday
Hip, hip, hooray
A blind exploding ego super-nova
A holiday
We have
Put the cart before the donkey
Hold me up renaissance junkie
Hammer toss
Candy floss
A freak-show in my head
P.T. Barnum’s stinkin’ drunk again
‘Never beens’
And Siamese twins
Florenz Ziegfeld’s dead
I’ve got a Coney Island in my brain
9. Lulu
There’s a corpse or two
In your hair Lulu
And you never had the time
For the fire-escaping kind
And you look like gold
In your hangmans’ coat
With your pockets full of Gin
Hang the past that roped you in
Roped you in
And the head you have
Is the head I have
‘Cause you’re not afraid to die
Close your eyes and wave goodbye
And the head you have
Is the head I have
‘Cause I’m not afraid to die
Hold my head and wave goodbye
10. Butterfly
Lay back and I’ll kiss your throat
While you talk on the phone
And hang up on your husband
If you want to be alone
It might be right, it might be wrong
It might be the unknown
But, we won’t think about it
‘Til he’s standing in the door
Shakin’ like a butterfly
Shakin’ like a butterfly
Shakin’ like a butterfly for you
With thoughts as dark as the pavement
Pitch black in the locust sun
He’d never even met a woman
Who’d had the procedure done
But, Friday night when the clinic’s bright
This Clergy-fathers son
Will stand upright
For the ‘Right to Life’
With a bible and a gun
Shakin’ like a butterfly
Shakin’ like a butterfly
Shakin’ like a butterfly undone
The air is thick with righteous men
But, your control is paper thin
I’d like to be a fly up on the wall
When you break down your cocoon
And watch the shattered pieces fall
I’ll give you a secret
That I know you’ll never keep
You give me the killing floor
And I’ll promise not to leap
‘Cause deep inside our skulls
There is a nest of small cocoons
You’ll wake one night in a cockroach sweat
Underneath an insect moon
Shakin’ like a butterfly
Shakin’ like a butterfly
Shakin’ like a butterfly stuck through
Shakin’ like a butterfly
Shakin’ like a butterfly
Shakin’ like a butterfly it’s true so true