Bright Eyes Album

I do my best to sleep through the caterwaul
The classicists, the posturing avant-garde
I bought a gray macaw named him Jules Verne
He'll probably outlive me he's a bright bird
Keeps me company I teach him new words

I saw a hologram at the theme park
She looked as real as me through the white fog
Then she melted down to her ankles
Turned into a million-watt candle
If I knew where she went I would follow

Walking through the land of tomorrow
Martian trinkets, plastic Apollos
In the sunshine try to act normal
My veins are full of flat cherry-cola
Slept on a bench by the roller-coaster

Dreamt I was riding on a motorbike
Lion of Judah painted on the side

I'm doing fine, I'm back in the Palisades
Life's a wash, a pastoral school play
China shops and cold ivory towers
I and I make toasts to the Caesars
Forcing down the dregs of Decembers

Madeline she spins in a slow bang
All through the house the strong smell of burnt sage
Let's make it clean and run out the spirits
I know a diving bell when I hear it
We're going down now under the surface

Light to dark can shift in an instant
Feeling close but keeping my distance
On all fours she's just so insistent
Fills my mind with jump ropes and slit wrists
Bust through the Firewall into heaven

Then I'm standing in that blinding light
Crooked crosses falling from the sky

Seen yeah seen by I and I

Took the fireworks and the vanity
The circuit board and the city streets
Shooting star, swaying palm tree
Laid it at the arbiter's feet

If I could change my mind, change the paradigm
Prepare myself for another life
Forgive myself for the many times
I was cruel to something helpless and weak

But here it come, that heavy love
I'm never going to move it alone
Here it come, that heavy love
Tag it on a tenement wall
Here it come, that heavy love
Someone got to share in the load
Here it come, that heavy love
I'm never going to move it alone

I was dressed in white, touched by something pure
Death obsessed like a teenager
Sold my tortured youth, piss and vinegar
I'm still angry with no reason to be

At the architect who imagined this
For the everyman, blessed Sisyphus
Slipping steadily into madness
Now that's the only place to be free

But here it come, that heavy love
You're never going to move it alone
Here it come, that heavy love
Tattooed on a criminal's arm
Here it come, that heavy love
Someone got to share in the load
Here it come, that heavy love
You're never going to move it alone

No, I don't want to play
It's a shell game, it's a shell game

Distorted sounds on oscilloscopes
Distorted facts, I could never cope
My private life is an inside joke
No one will explain it to me

We'll be everything that we ever needed
Everyone, on the count of three!
Everyone, on the count of three!
All together now!

Here it come, that heavy love
We're never going to move it alone
Here it come, that heavy love
Playing as the cylinder rose
Here it come, that heavy love
I only want to share in the load
Here it come, that heavy love
I'm never going to move it alone

Every new day is a gift; it's a song of redemption
Any expression of love is a way to return
To that place that I think of so often but now never mention
The one the voice in the back of my head says that I don't deserve

Come fire, come water, come karma, we're all in transition
The Wheel of Becoming erases the physical mind
Till all that remains is a staircase of misinformation
And the code we inherit, the basis, the essence of life

So I go umbrella under my arm into the green of the radar
How did it get so dark in the day?
It's just so bizarre, is it true what we're made of?
Why do I hide from the rain?

Inside some cloudy nostalgia where there are no features
We look at ourselves through a porthole, the passage of time
See that sunny day that we snuck down, hid under the bleachers
Kissed as the band marched, everything fell into line
So I go umbrella under my arm into the green of the radar
How did I get so lost? I'm amazed
It's just so bizarre all the things I'm afraid of
Why do I hide from the rain?

Sure I had my doubts
But I know it now
We are jejune stars

So it starts again
At our childhood's end
I'll die young at heart

So I go umbrella under my arm into the green of the radar
How did it get so dark in the day?
It's just so bizarre if it true what we're made of
Why do I hide from the rain?

I used to dream of time machines
Now it's been said we're post-everything
As a child imagining
Neck ties and Coast lines
I seen the show man, what a sight
Drenched us in approximated sunlight
The crowd was small and mostly blind
But kind, you're too kind

Now you are how you were when you were real
Now you are how you were when you were real

There you go again on that circular trip
Lick the solar plexus of some L.A. shaman
I'm out of breath I'd better sit
Been living, hard living

All I do is follow you around

I wouldn't waste another thought
On what is fair and what is not
The quinceañera dress she bought
Was unstitched with bullets
All the guests in the garden screamed
Women and tires squealing
Such opulence, such misery
Unwinding, unwinding

All I do is follow you around
All I do is follow you around

Now you are how you were when you were real

Pilgrim across the water
We are the same brother
Hitchhiking back to Zion
Hold in our tears as we flip the album
What if this leads to ruin?
You got a soul, use it
All this despair forgiven
Rolling away on a Wheel of Sevens
She sings like the Queen of Sheba
Voice through a blown speaker
One drop and bubbling Leslie
Calling me home like Haile Selassie

Pilgrim beside the fire
It's been a long winter
We got a lot in common
Cover our heads as they split the atom
All of our days are numbered
I've taken some comfort
In knowing the wave has crested
Knowing I don't have to be an exception
Children they fill the bleachers
One is the next Caesar
Keep all their minds collected
Until he comes, until he comes

Hide the Omega Day in plain sight
Too good to be true

I've seen stranger things
I've seen that tree of smoke
I've seen stranger things happen before

Pilgrim up on the mountain
Barefoot and still climbing
Filling the Book of Hours
Day after day in the filth and squalor
We are the chosen people
Safe from the next evil
One Love, magnetic memory
Reel after reel spinning within me

I had the wildest dream last night
I was swimming with you
In that cenote the heavens made with black fire
Just woke up too soon

I've seen stranger things
I've seen those daytime ghosts
I've seen stranger things happen before

I've seen stranger things
I've seen that tree of smoke
I've seen stranger things happen before

The people's key
Ringing through arena seats
The black machine
Played it all from memory
A fever dream
Well, I'll come back eventually
To wade into the water
Another and another

We go
Form some kind of code
The bodies float
And form some kind of code
The bodies float
Someone's out to know

Papa hobo
Don't hide your eyes
Mother mountain
Don't kill your unborn child
His day is coming
His day is coming

A question burns
Beneath the centuries of dirt
That voice you've heard
Well, every head's a different world
Well, mine's concerned
I boarded up the windows
A catatonic plateau
A backwards black-faced minstrel show
So just let me go
The prisoner moans
Oh, just let me go
The prisoner moans
No one has to know

Eva Braun went to dye her hair
Little Hitler sighs in his giant's chair
And dreamed of nowhere
And dreamed of nowhere
And dreamed

The people's key
Ringing filling everything
The theme repeats
Thinner than the galaxy
Impart to me
Your wisdom and eventually
I'll float into the ether
Another from another

We grow
Form some kind of code
A flesh at bone
We form some kind of code
A flesh at bone
No, you're not alone

History bows and it steps aside
In the jungle there's columns of purple light
We're starting over
We're starting over
We're starting
We're starting

I loved a Triple Spiral, my maiden-mother-crone
I folded my devotion into an origami rose
Stood at her Tiffany window, she said to look below
Could I see the town was burning?
Could I see the broken prison?
Could I see that it was time for me to go?

They looted the museum and took all that they could hold
A motorcade of flatbed trucks made off with quite a haul
That's when I heard someone shout,
"In with the new! Out with the old!"
A dusty box of letters
A rusting suit of armor
A casket made of fourteen karat gold

That's the problem
No sense of time
She is shaped just like an hourglass there laying on her side

I loved you Triple Spiral–father, son and ghost
But you left me in my darkest hour when I needed you,
When I needed you
Now that the dream is over I want it to be known
That I never saw it coming
Through my little human prism
How sad it is to know I'm in control

That's the problem
An empty sky

I fill it up with everything that is missing from my life
Where did you come from?
You fated sign
Spinning through the centuries expanding all the time

Three worlds at once that blend together
Three times I cried for us but I felt better then

I loved you Triple Spiral, my maiden-mother-crone
You found me in this fallow state, my mind was off and stowed
I heard your strange commotion and wished I could go home
To live a little longer
A full Indian summer
Long enough to carve you into stone

Hold on tight Beginner's Mind
The wheel is spinning too
Fast to make your move
The worst must be assumed
Oh how they will try
To pull and to pry
Away what you know now
Beat and beat it out
Leave a drum that makes no sound

A snuff film on a JumboTron for all the world to see

A cocktail napkin epitaph
A psychobabble telegram
Message written in the sand
The tide rolls in

Swear you'll do the opposite
Of all those tangled hypocrites
Who say that the experiment has failed
Don't go there
You're getting nowhere
You're getting nowhere

Stay awhile my Inner Child
I'd like to learn your trick
To know what makes you tick
To nurse you when you're sick
Oh how you've grown so cynical
Hard lines carved in your face
The sunshine is so cliché
Just like love and pain

You tried your best on the Rorschach test
but there is just nothing to see

Heard terabytes of perfect pitch
Some universal elegance
Stack the seventh and the fifth
Along the grid

Swear you'll be the opposite
Of all those stilted hypocrites
You know what made you infamous to them, don't you?
You keep starting over
You keep starting over
You keep starting over
You keep starting over

Hold on tight Beginner's Mind
The current is far too strong
It will carry you along
Till you're just like everyone
Stay awhile my Inner Child
I'd like to learn your trick
To know what makes you tick
To nurse you when you're sick

No one knows where the ladder goes
You're gonna lose what you love the most
You're not alone in anything
You're not unique in dying

I feel estranged every now and then
Fall asleep reading science fiction
I want to fly in your silver ship
Let Jesus hang and Buddha sit

It's on now
The days are long now
The ups and the sundowns
And a twisting mind

If I got to go first
I'll do it on my terms
I'm tired of traitors
Always changing sides
They were friends of mine

Don't hang around once the promise breaks
Or you'll be there when the next one's made
Kiss the feet of a charlatan
Some imagined freedom

All the rest is predictable
You can say you're the first to know
Bought a mantra to concentrate
Car alarm or hissing snake

I know now
How its gonna turn out
You've got to calm down
Or I'll lose my place

Got to get to the center
Got to get to the concert
Run off with a dancer
Gonna celebrate

We'll welcome the New Age
Covered in warrior paint
Lights from the jungle to the sky
See now a star is born
Looks just like a blood orange
Don't it just make you want to cry?
Precious friend of mine

Will I know when it's finally done?
This whole life is a hallucination
You're not alone in anything
You're not alone in trying to be

One for the righteous, one for the ruling class
One for the tyrant, one for the slaughtered lamb
One for the struggle, one for the lasting peace
One for you, and one for me

One for the FГјhrer, one for his child bride
One for the wedding, one for the suicide
One for the bunker, one for the broadcast booth
One for me, now one for you

How did we get so far away from us?
How did we get so far away?

One for the people, one for the parliament
One for the weary, one for the malcontent
One for the master, one for the protГ©gГ©
One for you, and one for me

One for the bread lines, one for the billionaires
One for the missing, one for the barely there
One for the certain, one for the real confused
One for me, okay, now one for you

Now that we've come so far away from us
Now that we've come too far to say
You and me, you and me that is an awful lie
You and me, you and me that is an awful lie
It's I and I
It's I and I
It's I and I
It's I and I