Things are getting ugly, but at least we’re not alone
There’s money I the marrow if you’d only break your bones
Like in tales of ancient heroes who burned angels for their gasoline blood
No, there’s nothing you could give me that would really be mine
I’ve got a secondhand second hand that tells someone else’s time
We could watch it tick what’s left of it and never do me any earthly good
What happens if the dead are sold?
A sunless light reflects off gold
And we can be both blind and rich
Without deciding which is which
Until idle hands explode
Yes, we search for soulless singers for our gutter-hugging hymns
And scream like we’re I submarines so we neither sink nor swim
Then wonder why it’s only lies or dead echoes of honesty we hear
No, self portraits aren’t worthless, but they can’t tell half a story
If your picture passed perfection, you’d see someone else’s glory
The best that you could hope for is one God’s-honest opinion from a mirror
What happens if the dead are sold?
Your words are warm, your breath is cold
Weighed in on the telephone
You’ll find some dreams are hard to hold
But idle hands explode
She dressed in her reflection just like hoping in reverse
But sometimes it makes you more sick when you hear about the cure
No I don’t need no Van Gogh to walk me through this war
Cause her glass refracted visions into days I don’t deserve
But she never figured out how best to navigate the winter
She watched it frost the flowers that grew out of her fingers
The blankets wrapped around her were no warmer than the windows left exposed
She barely pulled apart her lips the morning wind had split through
To say "Darling, please don’t leave; I’m afraid that I won’t miss you"
But I just can’t keep up with it: the iron jar, the graveyard, and the road
What happens if the dead are sold?
Which hollow mountaintop unfolds?
The silent streets where rivers ran
Have gone bone dry, so hold my hand
Because idle hands explode
The first martyr in the desert draws a line into the sand:
"Here lies the border of a boundless world"
From a time untested, a hand reaches for a hand
But left untouched, the fingers come unfurled
The unkindness of ravens makes itself well-known through darkness
A pack of passing shadows forms a cloud
When you walk alone, you know your traveling partner’s heartless
But it’s twice as tough when light don’t touch the ground
So we held on to each other like we’d seen the Revelation
We just got the same show everybody’s given
But a crowd still gathered round to see the fate of fate at stake
And they laid down a set of flames that burned like heaven
If the edges were worth anything, they hung like a cathedral
Where battle hymns keep playing until dawn
Through the smoke of sacrifices, second thoughts seem feeble
The first thought took the kill shot then moved on
The fatal flaw of dignity is in its own reflection
He thinks he sees perfection then explodes
He can’t even offer comfort when you stumble onto questions
He just tries to keep you off the rougher roads
So we held on to each other like we’d seen the Revelation
We just got the same show everybody’s given
But a crowd still gathered round to see the fate of fate at stake
And they laid down a set of flames that burned like heaven
Gambling with his sanity, Prometheus sets fire
To the fetters fixed into the mountainside
But it’s thanks to unstrung heroes that we’ve learned to burn the wires
That the fools before us called the ties that bind
Prayers rise up in melodies, some songs are sent as prophecies
The rest is either begging or prediction
Though some may walk through Hell to see, they’re no one’s private property
But in the wrong man’s hands, the truth is worse than fiction
So we held on to each other like we’d seen the Revelation
We just got the same show everybody’s given
But a crowd still gathered round to see the fate of fate at stake
And they laid down a set of flames that burned like heaven
Nature has been overcome, the devil’s in the derailed
The tracks run through the city’s heart; the train is in the mouth of a whale
The audience is breathless: it grows larger every day
They sigh and shake their headlines and say "What else can you say?"
I never asked for anything more
Than the dust and the glass to be swept from the floor
I didn’t care what was smashed neath the fists of time
Even the gentlest breeze can blow a body down
There’s a cabin in the valley where they buried Emma Brown
They weren’t kiddin round when they said they’d see her down the line
Napoleon and Josephine are setting wedding dates
For the citizens of prison camps whose love has been delayed
All they’re asking in return is the truth behind their dreams
"We’ll tell you what we never saw; you tell us what it means"
I never asked for anything more
Than the dust and the glass to be swept from the floor
I didn’t care what was smashed neath the fists of time
Even the gentlest breeze can blow a body down
There’s a cabin in the valley where they buried Emma Brown
They weren’t kiddin round when they said they’d see her down the line
A camera crew found Lazarus as if anyone could hide
"Could you tell us for the record what’s on the other side?"
"I don’t know if I saw Heaven; I don’t know if I saw Hell
But they never ask you questions you can answer for yourself"
I never asked for anything more
Than the dust and the glass to be swept from the floor
I didn’t care what was smashed neath the fists of time
Even the gentlest breeze can blow a body down
There’s a cabin in the valley where they buried Emma Brown
They weren’t kiddin round when they said they’d see her down the line
The vandals, they don’t fight no more: they just wait for Rome to fall
Then they’ll flush out all the frescoes so the future can be stalled
But the sleep beneath the same stars where the night sky has been torn
Like saints of a religion that hasn’t even been born
I never asked for anything more
Than the dust and the ash to be swept from the floor
I didn’t care what was burned by the lips of time
Even the gentlest breeze can blow a body down
There’s a cabin in the valley where they buried Emma Brown
She never saw it comin
When they said they’d see her down the line
Cast iron dreams always seemed the exception
The future felt fragile like paper or glass
My point of view twisted in every direction
Neither comfort nor blessing when it points to the past
The beat of her heart was a constant distraction
Her eyes sank so deep, I swear she couldn’t see
The back of her throat was an open grave calling
With word after word, she tried burying me
She was searching for a sure sign
Just like the first time you disappeared
But I’ll be waiting for you while she stares into her concrete mirror
Her mascara wet, skyline silhouette
Momentarily holding horizon
She tried blaming the sun, called it so condescending
As if losing its light was surprising
My own indecision, it finally provided
For years I denied it til it saved me somehow
But there’s nothing like waiting for the wind to start blowing
If it’s dark and I know it, what can I do now?
She was searching for a sure sign
Just like the first time you disappeared
But I’ll be waiting for you while she stares into her concrete mirror
Tears never translated, time never turns off
I’ve seen her enough to know I’ve seen her enough
My eyes followed the spotlight til they settled on the shrine
I tried paying the price without knowing the cost
The sky burst with lightning traveling backwards
An unnatural disaster controlled from below
When it came to confessions, I had already passed her
I’d given up more than she needed to know
Your shallow breath blew like an unfired bullet
I was dressing my wounds; you were dressing to kill
But you curse worse than murder, your words work in circles
Stares spiral through your eyes, and I’m spinning still
She was searching for a sure sign
Just like the first time you disappeared
But I’ll be waiting for you while she stares into her concrete mirror
A picture ain’t worth nothing
The eyes that stare back constantly are blind
Her fingertips slip through my hair like a convict’s
Trying to steal my presence of mind
Now her ghost town resurrection isn’t what she was expecting
There’s no place left for us to hide
Don Juan pawns off responsibility
For his role in the death of courtly love
As if someone might believe him, he just keeps on repeating
Names of other people he was thinking of
And I’m the one who has to listen
Without ever hearing who the victim was
We slept as long as we could while the dirt turned to mud
From the flood come to drown all our sorrows
Wondering what we’ll wake up to tomorrow
A former Italian speaking Spanish with abandon
Says the city as we stand is gonna burn
But if I’d placed my faith in every secondhand translation
I’d have lost it even further back, I’m sure
Now I’m coming up on one hundred windows full of strangers
With just one face to hasten my return
Solome found the streets of Paris absolutely charming
She fell in love with everyone she met
Even when somebody stole her sterling silver holder
They were sweet enough to leave the cigarettes
Now to see the sun reminds her that by the end of summer
The next one’s as far away as it can get
The church bells take their toll like I’m an enemy of echo
The sound keeps ringing round and round the hollow
Counting down the hours til tomorrow
No matter how loud you shout, I just can’t hear you now
So move your mouth, and I’ll try to read your lips
Like a blind man moving backwards, I can head for the disaster
Without giving second thoughts to consequences
Sebastian kisses Valentine past saintly for maintaining
The reputation he has fought to forge in blood
They keep waiting for their sacrifices to pay dividends
Sometimes a friend’s best miracles just ain’t enough
But while they’re both distracted, from the last place they expected
Comes a silent prayer, a lullaby, or love
I said, "You’re only just as good as the last fight that you won, honey
It’s been a long time that you’ve been taking care of me"
She held m head in her hands; whispered, "You don’t understand:
There is no old news, only brand new history"
And just one time, so much, I want to feel her touch
But you can never feel the hand’s of a true thief
The wind at my heels is erasing my footprints
So that only the faithful may follow
Yesterday’s got nothing on tomorrow
Glass shadows shatter lifeless still too large to be mistaken
For the dust which imitates the clouds from dry bones when they’re breaking
And it’s sharper than a razor on the edge of whispered words
Cutting clean through ragged innocence before the funeral cure
They worship empty battlefields like dust had won the war
While cannons sit expressionless: survivors of the storm
Her face glowed golden like a burning brand
My head keeps turning but I can’t look away
He fought to conjure up the message he was supposed to give her
She said, "While I’m alone, I watch time swing from a noose above the river"
Cause your tongue’s too swelled from biting, through your sliced throat let slip pride
Be it either sin or virtue, it’s already been eulogized
He fumbled for his frozen hopes til he felt them melt apart
She said "Imagine now how Moses felt the last time he saw the stars"
Her face glowed golden like a burning brand
My head keeps turning but I can’t look away
The railroad’s wrapped in ribbons round the old magnolias burning down
The kids pick picture from the rising clouds
The future looms large with a nearness that would terrify the fearless,
Erase the past, and disable the proud
It’s like preaching to the choir who has sold its souls for songs
Yesterday she was a blushing bride, but she wasn’t blushing long
They couldn’t trust the bunker-busters to dissolve the flesh connecting
So they blew the whole thing up without anyone objecting
The endless sky divides beneath the guise of power unrestrained
Denied the right to die, his right eye rolls back in his brain
Her face glowed golden like a burning brand
My head keeps turning but I can’t look away
I dropped the pack of pity I had pointed like a pistol
This road is paved with other people’s losses
Louder than a gunshot moans the locomotive whistle
Mile markers are replaced with highway crosses
The canyons at the cusp of Hell are filled beyond the brim
Pieces of people piled into mountain peaks
You can ask for answers while the blood carves sonnets on your skin
The ground will open wide to hear you when you speak
They said they couldn’t see your face among the ancient ruins
Give me one more morning and I can show it to them
Staring at Rapunzel are the wild eyes of Samson
Their heads shaved, they’ve been left as living ghosts
If our fingertips could touch, I wouldn’t care I’d been abandoned
These prison walls are greater than us both
The artificial heretic; the blur-eyed, disturbed dancer
Preach to the converts handcuffed to each other
Though they swallow only agony, the worst returns answers
That an earthquake at their backdoor couldn’t bother
They said they couldn’t see your face among the ancient ruins
Give me one more morning and I can show it to them
Nostradamus begs to be persuaded by a kiss
He already knows he looks for love in vain
Every day he wakes to find another woman’s face
But without fail, she asks to star in his next quatrain
Punctuate the pirouettes with giant leaps inviting death
I know I’ve felt his hands on me before
There’s been no great advances since they invented second chances
I guess failure doesn’t cost much anymore
They said they couldn’t see your face among the ancient ruins
Give me one more morning and I can show it to them
The drunkard dropped his dram at the first hint the sun had lifted
The parking lot unfolded like a hymnal
We waited for a sign because the borderline had shifted
The crippled cops can’t catch two brand new criminals
I expected them to burn; instead I watched the pictures melt
The storm-drain angels mourned the bloody strangers
We cried for each other so we wouldn’t have to for ourselves
I hit the highway like a dethroned moneychanger
They said they couldn’t see your face among the ancient ruins
Give me one more morning and I can show it to them
The dwellers of the diamond mine tried to leave their dreams behind
The means to make them more had been removed
The glimmering stockades collapsed, releasing prisoners of the past
To find their homes among the hollow tombs
The trees left standing start to cringe and climb Incinerator Ridge
Some tings in life aren’t meant to be outrun
There are paces where the sun can’t reach, where fire creeps into the breach,
Where dreams would rather burn than be abandoned
And someone has to call those places home
Here lies the body of Ramón
He marched across the mirrored room and sang a solitary tune
To steal a private moment from his twin
He breathed a mask with each warm word then wondered just whose voice he heard
Each wall a window letting no light in
The fiddler hangs upside-down to play until it weighs her down
Another noise to fill the Village Square
Twelve curses pile up around her head and form a fleeting crown
Then fall like encore roses from her hair
One man’s mercy seat is another’s empty throne
Here lies the body of Ramón
His bones were painted matchsticks struck and setting fire to his muscles,
Aimed their anger at the jail cell walls
Real prophets trade their sight for visions; he stared through the window wishing he’d had the good sense not to see at all
Yesterday’s newspaper’s still sitting in the alley with another name-free, page three tally
And I’m wondering if anyone is left alive
It’s not dark enough to sallow sleep, so it doesn’t matter if I see a shadow of myself or the backs of my eyes
You don’t need to remind me, I’m not alone
Here lies the body of Ramón
The sorrow of the rapture is in learning you can’t capture
All you’ve left behind: you find it don’t exist
All that’s born must shatter if its presence ever matters
Stare through eyes you’ll never recognize or miss
Driven like a drunkard to the ground by sounds of thunder
Like a pleading hymn to sing into the sky
Lovers kiss like a museum, knowing anyone can see them
They won’t separate or ever say Îgoodbye’
But it’s Îfarewell’ to the only hands that held you like a lonely man
Whose touch like dust can crumble in the breeze
You can’t wait for the good Lord to give you your reward
There’s a section saved in Heaven for the thieves
The sun sits on the altar knowing darkness has been called for
That blood must rise to keep our eyes from burning
The scene is painted onto cave walls so the second that the day falls
There’ll be proof enough that what we lost was worth it
There’s mercury in angel’s eyes that glows to show the heat that rises
So those you spurn can burn beyond your skin
The canyons and the cliffs close, there are voices when the sand blows
That long for something stronger than the wind
But it’s Îfarewell’ to the only hands that held you like a lonely man
Whose touch like dust can crumble in the breeze
You can’t wait for the good Lord to give you your reward
There’s a section saved in Heaven for the thieves
The executioner reveals his face and volunteers to take the prisoner’s place
Nine floodlights burn above the battlefield
A fever vision prayer survives and finds the tears that fell from eyes
That like wax dripped from a candlestick congealed
The king’s face on a pin’s head sings, the unconditioned arrow swings
And hits the chest of he who held the bow
The silence of the second heart tears me apart and makes me wish
My beat could reach hers long enough to hold
But it’s Îfarewell’ to the only hands that held you like a lonely man
Whose touch like dust can crumble in the breeze
You can’t wait for the good Lord to give you your reward
There’s a section saved in Heaven for the thieves
They’re picking up the petals falling off the gunshot flowers
That are hanging like thieves in the gardens of the capitol
They burn them up and use the ashes to count down the hours
It feels like my glass is almost full
Men with holy hearts and heavenly aspirations
Are trying to cross the Grand Canyon with a bridge made out of bones
My head’s so filled with the sounds of other men’s depression
I don’t have room to hear any of my own
Only liars hide the cost of traveling free
The city hasn’t got me lost: the city’s losing me
When I say I can’t get across, I need you to believe
My dreams are beyond revival
Oh, Migrant Mother, the western trail’s on fire
But there’s plenty of places around here to be poor
The Sacred Cities are filled with bums and guns for hire
And ditch diggers practicing the last true art of war
It’ll break your back, the sun sitting on your shoulder
The night’s an opportunity to contemplate the pain
I heard a woman singing in the Temple, so I told her
"No one can hear; don’t spend your voice in vain"
Only liars hide the cost of traveling free
The city hasn’t got me lost: the city’s losing me
When I say I can’t get across, I need you to believe
My dreams are beyond revival
The Grand Marshall of the victory parade has already passed me
Like he’d been crowned with the power of the kingdoms of the past
The devil’s dressed in drag, and he’s staring at me
Through the carved-out eyes of an ivory death’s-head mask
We’re all witnesses to crimes beyond our recognition
Curse the man who robbed me of my tears
The end of the story doesn’t change in new editions
It’s the same tale they’ve been telling you for years
Only liars hide the cost of traveling free
The city hasn’t got me lost: the city’s losing me
When I say I can’t get across, I need you to believe
My dreams are beyond revival
Like the smell of gunpowder, the smell of lava smoke
There are things that will haunt you til they make sure you choke
I’m an innocent man: I never could find anything worse enough to steal
I’ve been caught in the middle of some wrong-eyed trinities
I thought the mist hid the bridge; they said it was hiding me
There are phantoms in the footprints: ancient idols that you can’t help but feel
The downtown scenes exploding cause they’ve got no scars to hold them
Whenever anyone moves, the whole thing starts to bleed
Through unexpected circumstances, I have received
Messages of salvation not intended for me
Sometimes it’s someone else’s secrets you really need
Some people climb their whole lives through the scorn and the shame
To become common criminals without any name
Some die for another man’s honor and still see no reward
I stayed close to Maria, though I never did learn
How she danced through the candles while I kept getting burned
She had to find a new partner; there’s only so much fire I can afford
Her self-fulfilling prophecies had started going unfulfilled
Her pulse was so apparent that she never could lie still
We shared identical obsessions we couldn’t help each other feed
Through unexpected circumstances, I have received
Messages of salvation not intended for me
Sometimes it’s someone else’s secrets that you really need
My best friends made distractions a new kind of religion
Their crucified dreams were reborn as ambitions
I watched them wade in a river of blood, more than happy to drown
I divided the valley when I couldn’t think straight
With no path fit to follow but the trail that I’d blazed
And no comfort to calm me by the time I rolled back into town
Where the downtown scenes exploding cause they’ve got no scars to hold them
Whenever anyone moves, the whole thing starts to bleed
Through a series of coincidences, I have received
Messages of salvation not intended for me
Sometimes it’s someone else’s secrets that you really need
The bearers of bad news collected accidents like urns
Cause if you don’t let mistakes escape, at least they can’t return
They believed in higher powers, but only those whose eyes have been removed
I’ve seen monuments to dignity and epitaphs for empty graves
Artificial battles reflecting in the waves
It seems to be no easier to stand your ground when neither side can lose
I heard my heart make promises my blood could not afford
Like a steeple full of preachers leaping face-first toward the Lord
The kind of story that you hear about but never think to read
Though I never asked for any of it, I have received
Messages of salvation not intended for me
Sometimes it’s someone else’s secrets that you really need
There were angels of light captured in charcoal and chalk
Skeletons stripped of their hand-sewn shirt before they could talk
For once we were honest; at least I know that gets you nothing anymore
I’ll go to bed with the past pushed complete to the edge
I can’t keep it from rearing its ugly head in my head
But if dreams are my worst enemies, then I’ll have plenty to be thankful for
While the downtown scenes exploding cause they’ve got no scars to hold them
Whenever anyone moves, the whole thing starts to bleed
It’s from listening too close, I suppose I’ve received
A collection of lies true enough to repeat
Sometimes it’s someone else’s secrets you really need
