Everybody here, everybody hungers
Buoyed by reveries, avoiding those of strangers
Everybody greeds,
Everybody hungers
I build a tunnel to your face
Through books and bags
And people with their papers,
Pressed, creased and laced with
Inky inky words, dusty ink
Leaching into finger prints
Your songs are yours and yours alone -
O' would I were a song within
Your private megaphones
Does everybody greed?
Does everybody hunger?
I looked across the future and I saw only pain,
A feverish cloud of passion
Then a stalking slow malaise
Then, leaning on a steering wheel
With ashen eyes and words tending to dust
And broken seals,
The noise recedes, the light congeals.
You find a tunnel to my face,
Book surrenders delicately,
Almost imperceptibly
Excepting if you're anxious to perceive
'Cos everybody greeds, everybody hungers
Eyes locked in fierce tug-o-war
You never want to be the first to fall,
Or even worse to be the first not to fall,
The universe a cotton-ball
Dry of all the possible.
I looked across the future and I saw only pain,
A feverish cloud of passion
Then a stalking slow malaise
Then, leaning on a steering wheel
With ashen eyes and words tending to dust
And broken seals,
The noise recedes, the light congeals.
This is not the first time, K,
you felt like Joseph K or JFK,
Watching it all slip away down
the motorcade on a video replay
Over and over again all a mess
all a blur never get to
The bottom of this, or the top,
always somewhere in-between
Why are you so forgiving?
Each loose tap, shadow and squeaky board
is a habit-forming agent.
Does it come down to silly things like
dreading the thought of going through
the drawer and deciding
who owns what knife and which fork?
This is not the first time, K, you felt like
Helen K., not too blind to see that
"security is a superstition", but that's not
how you'd like it to be,
walking too slow to outrun the rain,
too fast to slow the passing cars,
shit I'm in the middle of nowhere,
somewhere in-between an angry lover and a payphone
and Mars,
name this feeling after water,
the canyons it carved in his face
through the windscreen, the voice
merged with the drum of the rain
and the tribal rhythm of the faulty muffler,
and the sawing of the worn-out wipers,
the silence that hung in the air after screaming
and, K, he seemed like a fragile little boy,
all small and shameful;
How do you turn this pity to hate,
How do you escape the confusion?
Why do you forgive?
Everyone looks for something to blame,
you smile at the stupidity, futility of you,
direct accusations -
the party,
the drink,
the drugs,
overwork,
just stress,
not enough sex,
was it something I said, or something someone else said,
or something someone else said that I said,
these things cut through your head, K,
Why are you so forgiving?
Each mutual friend or dinner with parents
tightens the grip of the circle,
Explain this to shadows or the water
disappearing down the plug-hole of the shower:
All that is solid
Melts into air
You find yourself wavering
At the rail of the stairs
With recalcitrant feet
And just enough breath
To speak but there aren't any words
Those that were spoken
Have been here before
They reasoned, they shouted
And pleaded and swore
And they hung in the still
And the heaviest of air
That was solid enough to burn
All the candles will shrink to profanity
All their darkness remind you of light
She'd be brushing her hair by the vanity
Her ribbons discarded and untight
Here is my kingdom
O lobby of kings
A suitcase and keyring
With my lockless keys
And a picture and a name that I carry with me
And a hand-ful of hooks for your wall
All that was rightfully
Soon became wrong
I hear Ozymandias had a glorious fish pond
But they dined on their opulent friends
Small to large
When the hands that had fed them were gone
Every toe print she left in the sand
Chasing the kite that was fleeing our hands
Will be sealed with embers
And the melt of the earth
And in time they'll paint
Something that was nothing like her
Here is my kingdom
O lobby of kings
A suitcase and keyring
With my lockless keys
And a picture and a name that I carry with me
And a hand-ful of hooks for your wall
The city greets me like a surgery
Before the juice has arrived
Pigeons jostling, apostling
The bearers of discarded delights
People counting down to growing old
Bowing their heads at the hole in the wall
There was a King and he gave me these wheels
And a Word on a board to absorb any stone from the crowd
Oh, Lord, don't you see my sign?
Everybody does but they don't wanna know it
It's a tough gig selling
The End of the World
But somebody's gotta do it
Count the rings to the answer machine
Note the noises of the house they're in
Baby coos over the sounds of a war
Must be a single mother with a teenage boy
Theft, fire and fatal disease
Heaven help you if you get all three
I know a saviour for ten dollars a week
And just a sign on the line to the Word of the Policy
Oh man, don't they hear me call?
Everybody does but they just ignore it
It's a tough gig selling
The End of the World
But somebody's gotta do it
The numbers greet me like a lover with news
To calculate the heavens is a solemn pursuit
Night sky so peaceful, it's hard to know
Why something so lonely should be throwing stones
There will be placard waving when I file my report
They'll be blaming fornicators and the mini skirt
And penning plucky headlines for the morning release
And they'll pencil in my armageddon
And even name it after me
Oh, will they ever understand?
Everybody does but they don't know how to say it
It's a tough gig selling
The End of the World
But somebody's gotta do it
In a dead man's sleeves
You can feel the sea
Coursing round your hairs
Even though you're not even there
Wearing dead man's pants
You can step through each dance
On your ways to work
His partner with her cheek upon your shirt
In a dead man's clothes
In a dead man's clothes
Every dead man's tie
Is a Bridge of Sighs
The knot against your throat
Never lies upon the creases of its ghost
A dead man's shoes
Have heard every excuse
They don't take to shine
They step in and out of time despite of you
In a dead man's clothes
In a dead man's clothes
The dead man's gloves
Press upon your palms
The hands of all his children
Waiting with him in the rain and counting cars
In a dead man's clothes
All dressed-up for the show
Your fingers finding pockets
And your shoulders finding arcs they've never known
In a dead man's clothes
All the ceilings never seem as low
In a dead man's clothes
All the figures in the room begin to glow
In a dead man's clothes
In a dead man's clothes
This party is long
Its songs are all wrong
Hasty keys don't quite match the door
Submarine laughter
Clinging to the walls
All the water that found you
And decided to stay
I felt every bubble
And every cascade
Traveling my skin
In search of a way
And I am etched
By each invitation
Without the strings we fashion
Into fast and bright allures
Without light enough to synthesize
Our crimsons and azures
And reposed in your hands
I'm neither woman nor man
Without number
Without name
Without face
Do you still hear the party drums
Clocking out the party songs
Of shapely and forever-love
Of together-til-the-end-of-love
(But never near the end of love)
Ooh baby ooh
Yeah baby yeah
mmm baby mmm
But within this soft horizon
Ruffled on our skin
Within the wetness
And the salty dull perfume
And reposed in your hands
I'm neither woman nor man
Without keys
Without song
Within you
A Gathering of Cats in a Lane
How We Go
B Side of the Suns
Two Suns Once
Static of Crows
The Lodger
Favourite Dinosaur
Silence in the Library
Iso Haircut
The Orbit of Your Breathing
I Don't Remember the Future
Specks on a Map
Oddities
The Gravestone Carvers
Imaginary Lines
Falling Asleep with the Moon Still On
Lovers' River
Prayers in Glass Houses
The Sea Will Take it From Here
Land
What Kind of Yes?
Long Tall Shadow
Once Was Water
The Sky that Came Before
You Are Here