Thursday Album

Maintain the bearing that you left with
Fifteen degrees north of anywhere
Try not to feel the shake in you hands
Just close your eyes and go fast to end

Breathe in the white clouds
And wait
Freeze out the world with
Ice crystals on the windscreen
And you're in the pilots chair

Mayday, ground control to no one
Empty the seats and put away the maps
You've been away past the far horizons

Close your eyes and sleep
Fast to the end

Breathe in the white clouds
And wait
Freeze out the world with
Ice crystals on the windscreen
And you're in the pilots chair

Faster, faster, faster, faster...
Faster, faster, faster...

Breathe in the white clouds
And wait
Freeze out the world with
Ice crystals on the windscreen
And you're in the pilots chair

Faster, faster, faster, faster...

Can you feel it in the dead of night?
It's all around but can't be seen.
Can you hear it in the parking lot?
It only speaks when spoken to.
Can you find it in the marathon?
The more you take the more you leave.
Can you see them in a pane of glass?
You know them but they don't know you.
I can see it now:
What gets lost but never found?
What could fasten two,
Yet only touches one?
Who could make it hurt,
As much as it did before?
(You could tie a string
Around the place where it used to show.)

I can hear the ocean when I say your name..
In the yellow hem of the sea's blue skirt.
You're the last asleep on a one-way train..
It's been eight years if it's been a day.
You can see her in a pane of glass..
You think you know her but you don't.
You share a family but you don't share a name..
Some things run deeper than blood.

No answers. No answers when you're not around

A darker forest paints with blood in the sun sliding down its trees
And casts in relief the colors we have seen
And all the storms that we had been
They're paled and past
In the presence of the world at hand

Am I really there in the fractured light of the forest floor
With the broken branches
Am I really there in the same light
In the same life on the only road

A darker forest waits
In which we relive all our past mistakes
And trace them back with our decisions
To the fork in the road
But what if every path you take
Starts to look the same
And lead equally astray
We'll walk in circles and never find our way

On and off, the cylinders burn
With the fading heart of youth
And the sun slips below the treelike
Just out of view
Back and forth across the sky
The stars are hanging from a wire
(Machine guns still firing in the corners of our eye)

But in the light of the day we'll disappear
Just like the little sparks against the sun
No one remembers where they begin
or where we end

In and out, the days escape the damages of dawn
Still our dreams lie in broken pieces
Rustin on the lawn

But in the light of the day we'll disappear
Just like the little sparks against the sun
No one remembers where they begin
or where we end

The first step's got me lying on the floor
By the second step, I hear a knocking at the door
Three: I put my life in your hands
By the fourth step how much light is left?
Five six seven-I can see my dark and the harm
I've done, I've left
Eight, nine ten- I'll take it back again
Eleven twelve: I'm putting out fires in hell...

You cut your teeth on the cold war costumes
But caught your eye on a Lilly-white lullaby of
red and black collapse
You mix it up in the church and state dives
But cut it loose when it's time, it's time, it's time to let it go

Check your flag to see which way it blows
No...
Lick your finger then you'll really know
You got a taste for the candy contracts and that's why
You kiss your wife with a Saccharin sweet smile
It's red and white polite
To keep your cool in the hot seat spotlight
You turn it up: the heat
The heat is getting close

Check your flag to see which way it blows
No...
Lick your finger then you'll really know
But you won't find out
Which way the wind really blows
Until your hand gets caught in the cookie jar

Hold you hand to the fire
And your eyes to the sky
They're just different shades of cellophane
Taped against the lights.
Faulty seams, drawn on plastic leaves
Past and future replicas
Past and future streams
Hold your head underwater
And try to see if you can breathe
Or if you drown in the shallow
depths of your belief
Because somewhere there must be a better place
Here you call to your neighbor
Only to see the track is set and they're
Walking back and forth in a circle
Saying the same words
Making their lips sync
In time with psalms on Sunday mornings
And all their hearts align with pale fire
So call the appear ambulance
To trace the paper cuts
Don't call on me, I'm a plastic reed
Bending in the feigning wind
Of artificial fields
Then you read the paper
Of a woman's early death
And note explaining why she left
It says:
"Somewhere there must be a better place
And it's marked with the fountain I've seen
glowing in my sleep."
And so you want to die and leave this shadow land behind
To eviscerate the truth from the lie
Because somewhere there must be a better place
but
What we thought was a fountain of life and light
turns out to be a
Mountain crushing down upon us, casting it's shadow
Closing the distance
between us and Babylon
And all our songs
are just the sounds of past and future days
Past of future names
Collapsing around us

She spins magnetic rings
Around the dark violet heart of god
She's a magnetic field,
Shower of sparks,
When she comes on.

There's a silent charge
In a coil of wire
When the currents pass right through it.
We're coupled lines in lightning strikes,
We jump like birds on a vine.
We're the magnets caught in a metal heart
Where the blood is pumping through it
When the needle spins, it sings,
"Feels like we're in love..."

He spins magnetic rings that fall apart
When he's removed from her
He's a magnetic field
Under the silver of clouds
Where the lining of skies
Looks like the dirt on the ground.
His only true north is down

There's a silent charge
In a coil of wire
When the currents pass right through it.
We're coupled lines in lightning strikes,
We jump like birds on a vine.
We're the magnets caught in a metal heart
Where the blood is pumping through it
When the needle spins, it sings,
"Feels like we're in love..."

I lost my wedding ring down the kitchen sink
Now it's glimmering somewhere far away
And I'm sitting here with an empty glass
Waiting for the day to swallow me whole
I'm holding on to nothing

Sold my wedding ring to another man
Who was drunk in lust far away from home
Now I'm waking up with an empty hand
Trying to buy something to take me away
The page I've written
I'll sleep in the space where no one's breathing
We'll trade all our memories for forgetting

I saw you standing with a broken cigarette out in the rain.
I guess all our lives are a little less than they seem,
now you're praying to the memory of a god you used to love (A reminder of his death hanging low around your neck)
Do you find sleep comes easy
Dancing with the empty silhouette of everything?
Our waking lives are just dreams of our dreams.
Standing in the city asking what it's all for but
there's nothing in this world that giving meaning makes it more:
The Louder the ring, the less the thing

Screaming from a stage or at a pay-phone in the rain
trying to find the words I always think I need to say
Please, bring it back to the moment before you left
I never felt the sting.
The louder the ring, the less the thing.
Break, Break, break, break it down
Back to the way that it was before
When symbols weren't just loaded guns
and black clouds weren't just metaphors
Bring, bring, bring it back
Back to the way that it was before:
Empty all the loaded guns and bury all the metaphors.
Now we're going around in a place that makes no sound,
where names never fit
and nothing ever means a thing

[No lyrics]

There's a thousand black cars
Driving around in my blood stream
I'd have to take a thousand pills
To find out where their headlights lead.
Is it cold New York?
Is it freezing in your bed?
Because I caught a deep chill
When I went over the Hudson again.
It's alright, counting city lights,
Where the Turnpike divides,
Waving goodbye to my former life.
I don't want to be a self-medicator
But it's hard to sleep when you're born to run.
I'm sick of living life in the Garden State Trap
But all the roads are pointing home again.
Holy Cross has got a headstone all picked out for me
And my only job is to walk around until I fall down at it's feet.
Maybe home is just the place you can never escape:
From the Camden City graves to the edge of the Palisades
It's alright, counting city lights,
Where the Turnpike divides,
Waving goodbye to my former life.
I don't want to be a self-medicator
But it's hard to sleep when you're born to run.
I'm sick of living life in the Garden State Trap
But all the roads are pointing home again.
And I'll be counting the city lights
Blinking on and off tonight as life passes by
And I'm left behind, standing on the shoulder of the Jersey Turnpike.
Buildings seem to rise like coffins full of stars getting buried in the sky.
You want to laugh and dance... to be free? Well, alright--
I've been thinking about those days I wanted to sleep
And you'd wake me up just before you'd leave
And I'd fall back into a dream:
Walking in fresh city snow that you'd never seen
And I'd never leave your side.

[No lyrics]