Sack Full of Silver

Hidden Lands

Sack Full of Silver

Yoo Doo Right

The Napkin Song

Americana

The Ghost

Whirling Dervish

Triangle

Diesel Man

On the Floe

Hidden Lands

Looks like the sun can light
Your features from behind their hidden side
Speaking of an age has yet to come

Without the sun the grass
Would never grow and time would cease to pass
And everyone would stay just the same

Guess it's the sun that shrink
The houses and the streets of the town
Especially my house, which used to have
these hidden lands

Sack Full of Silver

I've been telling you so you ought to know
What will happen unless you forego

The pulsing sun reverses the propellers
On the Cessna plane
It falls into the jungle and is swallowed by the rain

Week after week the monkeys watch the fallen sons decay
Trying to get thorough the windows to the
Chocolate on their face

When psychologists write a book on this
And sell it, it becomes
A cartoon animated broken wire model
Of pterodactyl bones

But I've already seen the picture, it filled me with belief
So I head into town with my sack full of silver
Which is gonna buy me grief

I've been telling you so you ought to know
What will happen unless you forego

Yoo Doo Right

The Napkin Song

Out eating burgers in a friend's car
Each paper napkin has a happy star
Deep in the trash can they begin to sing
"See what a life of innocence brings"
These things don't make me sad today

There comes a time when everyone's plans
Fall like a dog from a truckbed grandstand
Fall like red snow on the freeway
"I could have done all these things," he said,
"And maybe I could have loved you
But I'll pretend I'm above it now."

Night bugs come through the window crawling
Dead man's shirts in the closet calling
"Why didn't you write me before I died?"
I would've - but I don't know what to say
To my best friends

Americana

You'll get what you expected from your 18-dollar home:
The worth of having cheated and the rage of being alone

There was a year when days and hours flew
And I gained an hour when I moved out here with you
Out of all the thousands I wasted on you
You'll have the time to break in your 18-dollar home
To feel the worth of cheating and the rage of being alone

Your walls are bare like all the walls you've known
Your room's the same as dozens you have known
Takes more than a table and chairs to make a home
But you have two things to furnish your 18-dollar home:
The worth of having cheated and the rage of being alone

Your window is your prehistoric eye
Your window is your prehistoric eye
Go ahead and watch those dinosaurs roll by
Companions you can turn on in your 18-dollar home:
The worth of having cheated and the rage of being alone

The Ghost

Well I woke up on the gravel ground
At the feet of a long tall train
Remembering not where I was from
Remembering not my name

I thought of friends from years ago
In a youth I'd thrown away
And a girl who used to love me so
Though I couldn't recall her face

Then I realized I was only drunk
And the years were stripped away
I felt like a widower stoned and watching
A film of his wedding day

She ran to the car with a T-shirt on
Her face as sad as the moon
Well I was lost and I was bummed
By the ghost of yet to come

Whirling Dervish

I realize it's two or three comparisons away
But somewhere in the background of the calmest of your days
A scrap of paper floats a thousand feet up in the air
Abandoned by some dust devil that died and left it there

The wind digs deep and peels up the skin of the land
The howling current erases the prints from my hand
I know you are a creature of soil and air
If one becomes too heavy the other simply escapes from there

When you unleash the sand and wind
I am suspended by your eyes
Squirming like a beetle pinned
Between the devil and the deep blue sky

The wind licks off the tarpaper with sandy cat tongues
Numberless horned bullets lodge in a lover's lungs
At last I see the ghosts which have been with me all along
Spinning on an axis pointed straight up at the sun

When the substance of our life together becomes too much
And you threaten to remove the whirlwind of your touch
I am only a piece of trash up a mile high
Grabbing at the falling sand which held me in the sky

Triangle

I am feeling just a little down
Nothing I can wrap reasons around
But I can ignore it if I look real hard
And makes perfect triangles out of every three stars

Sometimes I make burns on my arms
Cause it moves that feeling from my heart to my arms
And I'm driving and it keeps me awake
I have so many more triangles to make

Now that I have planted the seed
Maybe those triangles will form without me
Surround the world in their crystalline ache
And freeze the heroes into glassy mosaics

Diesel Man

I was on the corner phone to someone I'd know
About the only things that seemed important
Two corners of my life - this locked up empty night
And a gar skull I found on a beach in Texas

I praised the strength of men caught in the moment when
Deciding to forgive themselves their failures
Like this night of broken things - the song I tried to sing,
The ashtray, and the piano lady's laughter

And someone in the phone knew everything I'd ever known
Hummed soundtracks to dreams I had forgotten
Things that we didn't have right we argued half the night
Knowing we could not come any closer
I loved the telephone, talked to the dialtone
While people on the sidewalk hurried by me

On the Floe

There is a bar where everyone I know
We talk about some things we don't begin to know
We're smart enough to realize we got no business here
But not smart enough to rise above our bitterness and fear

There is a bridge they're afraid to complete
Creatures walk on it wearing ruts on their feet
That long ago someone has broken their hearts
They watch without seeing as we exit the bar

Seems to me we are stranded on the floe
Watching distant shorelines as we go

There is a song so hard to steer
I thought it would capsize in bitterness and fear
I look to the sky when I'm tired of the sea
Constellations are moving, they're useless to me

And it seems we've been stranded on the floe
Watching distant shorelines as we go