In the Spanish Cave
- Mr. Limpet
- Ring
- It's OK
- Ahr-Skidar
- Red Sun
- Munich Eunich
- Elsie Crashed the Party
- Timing
- Astronomy
- Wand
- July
Mr. Limpet
In bed I hear cars and trains and think of swamps and oceans
The diesel sounds of anchor chain and muddy stirrings of a love I could have known
I choose to swim from the submerged car, leave my unconscious friends
Avoid the grip and lazy turn by twisting through the water just like them
Through fiber lips into the waves and through ports of a destroyer
Where weightless men in steel caves dance with Eddy and his red sister Coral
It takes me years to rise again and years to travel home
I wish that you could travel too... tell me the story of a love I could have known
Times there's a time to make some changes
Then there's times that things should stay the same
Times I can't seem to tell the difference
It's easy to make that mistake
Times there's a question in my mind
That never makes it to my face
Times I believe that I'll go blind
For letting vision take your place
In my dreams I walk a yellow land
Looks like parts of movies I have seen
Dream so hard I hurt you with my hand
In my dream I fight a living being
Times there's a time to make some changes
There's times that things should stay the same
Times when I can't seem to tell the difference
It's easy to make that mistake
It's OK
My old girlfriend made new friends,
Got happy deep inside
Wealth is felt in such strange ways,
In passive genocide
It was a genetic thing
How she turned to your
Outside forces run her dreams
And nature's choice come true
One gene lets you buy your way
One gene makes you sad
One gene makes her shake and cling
And that one I don't have
I was a genetic thing...
Ahr-Skidar
To say a turkey will stand in the rain
With his mouth open till he drowns in the sky
Is like saying certain people will
Take does of pleasure till they die
That's what an alien would say
(Oh, so you're an alien.)
No, that would be ridiculous
(Oh, so you deny it now.)
I have a receipt that says Texas
And I kind of like the feel of cool water
With no place left to go
Red Sun
Well I hate to see the red red sun go down
I hate to see the red red sun go down
That's when the hogbone man lay his knuckle down
I've become convinced that you're the one
Cause you never flinch under the gun
Lovers kneel by the roadside in pools of broken glass
Gator tails fly like black angels from the wheels - as they pass
Munich Eunich
Elsie Crashed the Party
A round of loud birds, a round of scaly bends,
A round like trench warfare and my brother's back again
Elsie crashed the party in a homemade leather dress
My love and I build her a sled and dragged her to her rest
All the cities on the edge of the land
Where salty waves push sand under the door
Are full of people who don't understand
Why we have chosen to stay out of the war
These longings drive us to the edge of town
Where old houses may stand or we may knock em down
It isn't malice, it's not a game
And not even Elsie will leave as she came
All the cities...
We broke the law and left the porch light on
The sun is brighter than a hydrogen bomb
Thirsty and damaged I answer the door
To Elsie my creation, my creature from the north
All the cities...
I know what it is to sell cold sentiments for cash
They say what it is, it's hard to give you more than that
I wait for a little while by the countertop display
With all the pretty things that take my breath away
The windows start to ripple every early afternoon
They burn until the evening but never are consumed
Even in an hour of shadows escaping from the west
I wish that I could turn the sunset into cash
Astronomy
I woke riding on a falling moon
Turns my heart and my pillow blue
Traveled so long that you're old and new
Traveled so fast I lost my shadow
One of these days will realize
The darkest shadow falls from the clearest skies
You're so silent and your skin so cold
That I jump up saying "Go shadow go"
And you surface from a deep blue sleep
I say I'm thirsty and I had a dream
You say "There's a glass of water on the floor
So you don't need to leave me anymore."
One of these nights I'll sell my soul
To sleep in something that doesn't rock and roll
I woke riding on a falling moon
Turns my heart and pillow blue
Tried to make peace between the new and old
Tried so hard to lose my shadow
One of these days will realize
The darkest shadow falls from the clearest skies
Wand
The whites of this wand are culled from a visit to the valley of the bones
The black staff's carved from tropic wood cut down in summer storms
As hot and cold air rub together, make lightning in the sky
So do these distillates of two dark lands conjoin to endow...
Look through the air, do you see contrails gone from the sky?
Yeah, and you see lovelight reflected from Ed Gein's eye.
Doctors and orderlies weep as new children are born,
A rash of mistakes sweeps the nations' maternity wards.
Borderguards everywhere turn and suck their guns
Every leader is sterilized along with his firstborn son
We can't find the airwaves, they've disappeared into next week
At last god is silent, he's lost all his power to speak
It might be the last of the changes you'd see, but
I'll make my mother a house on the hill that overlooks the sea
Get off on this wand if you want, but let me tell you girl
It's about as effective as my dick for changing the world
July
Last July I bought some opium incense
Didn't know that that was once your brand
Wintertime I spark it to erase the scent of your sadistic man
You healed your bruises with cigarettes
And drove for hours wasted in the fog
To be where other women wouldn't call you things
Where men wouldn't sniff you out like dogs
If only just once you'd told me you don't like men who treat you like dirt
Who slip you drugs intended to seduce which travel deep and cause you hurt
I wonder what would happen if
You learned to speak of your contempt
Instead you celebrate your face
By lending it to each of them
The redneck in me wants to prove, the college boy is scared to move
The homemaker has quit his job, the nihilist has found a god
A carpenter who takes an axe, a moth who burrows into wax
A chain between you and the ape - the missing link was Joan the Saint
i think you are the girl who sees a quarter inch through everything
Sees bodies underneath their clothes, no faces, only peeled bones
Your father was the artist who took pictures every day of you
And made a stop-motion film that shows you turning into him
I wonder how the Pharoah knew he had to save himself for you
And when I got to take his place I praise the years that burned his face