WRITTEN ON YOUR WALL

 

Talk to me                                                

Alueeyualuah

It’s not too clear                                         

Alueeyualuah

I need you you know                                  

Alueeyualuah

What’s going on in there?                           

Alueeyualuah

 

The feeling’s mutual

It’s the same the other way

Play it backwards if you want

If it’s games you want to play

 

Now I ask myself                                        

Alueeyualuah

When your ice starts to thaw

What is written on your wall?

You never know nobody quite

 

You let me see                                           

Come again

What I want to see                                     

What’d you say?

You let me write                                         

Alueeyualuah

What I want to read                                   

Come again

 

Now I ask myself                                         

Alueeyualuah

When your ice starts to thaw

What is written on your wall?

When your ice starts to thaw

What is written on your wall?

When your ice starts to thaw

What is written on your wall?

You never know nobody quite

 

I sail tonight

Where strangers know me best                      

Really really now?

A simple life

On modest bread                                         

Is it what you want?

I’m sailing back

I’ve changed my mind                                   

Really really now?

Because I want to know

I really need to know

Really now?

 

Now I ask myself                                          

When your ice starts to thaw

What is written on your wall?

When your ice starts to thaw

What is written on your wall?

When your ice starts to thaw

What is written on your wall?

You never know nobody quite

 

Your eyes are drawn (on)

And your lips are drawn (on)

Nothing else is drawn (on)

From memory

Our words are gone

My peace of mind gone

And your body’s drawn (on)

From memory 

 

Alueeyooaluah

Alueeyooaluah

Alueeyooaluah

Alueeyooaluah

 

THE COMPANY

 

You're a three piece cipher

On the tower of sin

Called a company

When the sun disappears

Your loved ones clock in

To keep you company

 

That little voice win your head that tells you wrong from right

It's yelling from the bottom of a canyon tonight

You can't make it out when the rocks start to slide

You wake up inside the company 

 

There's no time to argue the master plan

It's simple, keep it company.

Go on a cozy up with the law of the land

keep it company

 

All memory fades inside your box of sand

You follow the leader from an unmarked sedan.

You're driven to the point

You can't call yourself a man

 

Welcome to the company

Your point of view is everything

Are you looking for a bright eye?

A bright idea?

Keep it company

 

They turn the rare exception

Into daily events  

At the company

It's a capital crime to connect the accidents.

Keep it company

 

They pulled the devil out of his pit

Sold it back to him plus fifty percent

You'll want for nothing

That's how their story went

There's no ending at the company 

 

Welcome to the company

Your point of view means everything

Is it a window, just a window, just a window through your soul?

Is it a window, just a window, just a window through your soul?

Are you looking for a bright eye? 

A bright idea?

Keep it company. 

 

There' s a kind of fear that doesn't pound on the door.

You already keep it company. 

It telegraphs from below the noise floor

Everybody keeps it company. 

The great armies on the planet guard the emptiest cell.

You'll get a key to go inside

Just when you think to rebel

You're wanted at the cliff's edge

Here's something for a dizzy spell…well?

 

Welcome to the company

Welcome to the company

Welcome to the company

It's the hand you had in it

The role you played in it

Are you looking for a bright eye?

A bright idea?

Keep it company

 

Hmmm.... Keep it company

Keep it company

Keep it company

 

THE DEFECTOR

 

You’re my enemy

I’m here to stomp out your kind

But that won’t do

No I’ve got a thing for you

 

You and I’ve got a secret

We’re sworn to opposite sides

What does it mean to feel?

Is it safe to confide?

We speak in codes

To conceal our lies

 

I just want to defect to you

I want to cut and run

I promise to kiss you again 

When the war is done

 

Now you’ve found out my weakness

What will you make me confess to tonight?

My torn minds, fraught with dreams

You’re fleeing my rifle’s sights

How could I shoot out the world’s last light?

 

I just want to defect to you

I want to cut and run

I promise to kiss you again 

When the war is done

 

Want to break the pattern here

I was trained to be clear

To cloak myself in your things

But did I go a stitch too far?

 

I want to pull you close       

But the static might pick up

If I sleep with you

I might not wake up

 

Now all I want to protect is you

You and your barbed wire skin

Though you promise me everything

I have to wonder, did you just come to win?

 

I just want to defect to you

I want to cut and run

And when the moon scars the sky, I promise to kiss you again

When they blink their eyes

 

­ROSE

 

Rose, Rose

Crooked smile, so vain

Fashionably late

On the lips of men

On the lips of men

 

See her

Black and white on film

On a bridge between two mists

She dropped out of frame

Into the rippled mirror Seine

 

Waited for a wave of strings

To spin me through the star machine

 

And when the star flew off the bridge

Over the rails of the Pont de Sully

I wanted to save her life

But I was glued to my seat

And when Rose flew off the bridge

They filmed it day for night at the Pont de Sully

And you wanted to savor her life

Eyes glued to the screen

 

Rose, Rose

For a locket off its chain

His picture petal flew

She broke the fourth wall

Never seeing me at all

 

My eyes betray me

My lips mum

In this velvet curtained tomb

Till the first reel begins

And she comes back again

 

And when the star flew off the bridge

Over the rails of the Pont de Sully

I wanted to save her life

But I was glued to my seat

And when Rose flew off the bridge

They filmed it day for night at the Pont de Sully

And you wanted to savor her life

You were glued to the screen

 

BOOKKEEPING FOR THE WORLD WAR

 

They need someone with an eye for details

Who doesn't get the picture very well

Is that what I'm here for?

To forget what I'm here for?

Counting drops in a downpour?

Bookkeeping for the world war?

 

If you're the one with too much to lose

With your hand over the centrifuge

And that's what you're cleared for

Just forget about the top floor

No one knows the words they sing

As they watch the expanding ring

An explosion from the war wing

 

You carry out the exercise

You do not moralize

That's not what you're here for

That's not what you're cleared for

Keep your eye on the short term

In so many words from the law firm

 

They're calling it a perfect storm

You call it soaked in a uniform

This just in through the out door

Yeah you've seen this before

You're one sale on the futures floor

Ghost notes in a symphony score

Bookkeeping for the world war

 

Everything you're aiming for

Happens out of the blue

No, no, no, you saw it coming a mile away.

 

Now the woman with the hookbone nose                    

Now the woman with book in her hand                       

Carved in stone           

                                               

Now the woman with the hookbone nose                                            

Now the woman with the book in her hand                                          

Carved in stone                                                                       

She's got news

She's got news

She's got news

She said if you want your future back

You've got to know where you came from

 

The thing you're not forgiven for

Happens out of the blue

Can't you see it coming a mile away?

 

TELLTALE HEART

 

Hear you knocking at my door

Waking up the neighborhood

Telltale heart, telltale heart

 

Charge right in with the fire you stole

From the hand of Lady Liberty

Telltale heart, telltale heart

 

The locks are there to deny you

To keep things in their place

So leave me now

To my skipping records and dinner trays

 

You think the world should revolve

Around your sweet tooth

But it leaves me with the taste

Of the mud on your boots

Telltale heart, telltale heart

 

When you’ve burned these walls down

What will this match-up prove?

How you’ve gotten strong,

Or me impossible to move?

Telltale heart, telltale heart

 

For so long I’ve exiled you

To your fabled city of gold

Your outlaw love

Tells of a fountain to cleanse my soul

 

The lengths I've gone to play it safe

Have all blown up in my face

Let's dive through the blaze

And dare to love what we can't contain

  

THIS IS KNEELING

 

Tell me are you braced for this?

This is kneeling

I wonder, were you raised for this?

This is kneeling

A simple thing

Can be profound

I’m going to put my lips to the ground

I’m ready, are you up to this?

This is kneeling

 

Have you ever seen a wound disappear?

This is healing

Have you ever prayed to stars

Through a crack in the ceiling?

This is the place

You’re standing on

Where grass still grows

Still grace might dawn

This could be an opening, a revealing

 

And this is a story bending

Your will into faith

An invitation

It’s time to dress this cut

Before it scars

Can you go there?

You are here

 

Have you stood to fight

What you cannot change?

Does the thought remain--

Just let go the reins, can you?

 

Sometimes you’re granted more

Than you’d dream of stealing

Sometimes you’re born on the hook

Then released in the reeling

 

Lay down your guard

And take it in

You’ll find the meaning

On your skin

Maybe we were made for this

This is kneeling

 

­OPEN TO A LIGHT

 

You love the cruel world

You don’t hesitate

You’ve seen the underworld

And all kinds of suffering

 

Within its stone walls

You corner a runaway dream

And you cut yourself to pieces

And then you are all renewed

 

You are open to a light flooding the tomb

You know that poetry is sweetest by the light of the shattering moon

It’s not mercy you’re begging for

You’d rather take the pain

With your pie in sky

Tasting sweeter than the pie on your spoon

You are a hero in this life

You will, you will, you will have a taste for wounds

 

You love the cruel world

The one that makes you late

That breaks open your heart

And pours a stream for refugees

 

You give the ghosts back their names

Each tear its birthright claim

And when grief traps us like pictures

You pull us right out of our frames

 

You are open to a light flooding the tomb

You know that poetry is sweetest by the light of the shattering moon

It’s not mercy you’re begging for

You’d rather take the pain

With your pie in the sky

Tasting sweeter than the pie on your spoon

You are a hero in this life

A hero in this life

You will, you will, you will have a taste for wounds