Lyrics for
How I Came To Cry These Tears of Cool
1.Joe McCarthy Is Sweeping Off His Grave
2.Does She Still?
3.Lover, There’s A Light On
4.Give My Regrets To Broadway
5.November
6.Let’s Burn The Guitars
7.Chinatown
8.Life Out On The Fringe
9.Culiacan
10.Rosa, Rosa From Barcelona
11.Sistine Chapel Ceiling
12.Fresh Kill In Nowhereville
Joe McCarthy Is Sweeping Off His Grave
What the hell is free speech for when we can't use it anymore
It's the red scare with a veil across his face
And Joseph McCarthy is turning over in his grave
History is a waste of ink
When grown adults can't make the link
To textbook pages catering to kids
That sound is Joe McCarthy and he's knocking on his coffin lid
The internment camps are back open for business
We're back to pointing fingers now as if pointing fingers could dissavow
The evil alliances we've cultivated
It's just that the public didn't know their names
Or the back room strategies to patriot games
Joseph McCarthy is a fisherman from the grave
And smarter fish are not lured by shiny bait
Love it or leave it that's a cowards way to see it
Well it's never black or white or right or wrong
If brothers turned their backs on brothers and just went along
I guess that Ted Kaczynski would still be mailing letter bombs
For a nation who wants peace I see
Too much aggressive policy
You cannot use a filter for the facts
You gotta give out some respect
If that is what you wish to collect
You cannot sleep with Jill to get at Jack
Then scratch your head in wonder when Jack strikes back
Or claim you never saw any sign of an attack
When you see Joe McCarthy and he's sweeping off his grave
You gotta stand up and say Joe I'm not afraid
You can march me up against the wall
I'll tell you the same
Does She Still?
Katherine was a dream to everybody it seemed and I guess that distorted my view
because it never felt right and I clung on too tight and she did what she had to do
Nights I would spend lamenting that loss from the window to the street down below
to see her stroll by in the arms of that guy was too much for me to own up to
Sara was rich she was kind of a bit-ch-ildish at times
and I couldn't contend with her family and friends I truly feared that they outclassed mine
But I must concur her convertible purred she was wild a reckless and free
When your driving too fast your bound for a crash and the risk it was too much for me
Does she still think about me, does she still think about me late at night
when the feeling is right, does she still think about me?
Madeline was terse she didn't like me at first she was English proper divine
and I rose up her ranks and I gave proper thanks to a jug of Queensberry wine
But the drink it took old I suppose it got old
too many mornings she'd come to find me again wrapped round the tanks of an
Armitage Shanks or shivering by the banks of the Thames
Maryann struck a chord and it stuck, she was a cynic to the highest degree
she couldn't get close because she held out no hope for the plight of humanity
all her lovers and friends laid between the bookends
and the then and the now always clashed
And I couldn't compete with Yates or with Keats or the hills and the dales of the past
So from Anna to Barbara to Cathy to Donna and down to the alphabets end
if you want my confession the answer is "yes maam I still think of you time and again"
and I wonder if maybe when you lay with your baby and you back and you forth reminiese
my name ever trips from the tip of your tongue and drips down over your lips
Because I don't really miss you and I don't want to kiss you
I was just hoping you could find
A place in your heart maybe one little part do I ever cross your mind
Do you still think about me?
Lover, Theres A Light On
Sadie was a raging woman, they said her heart was filled with old pin cushions
She stood before me like a golden locket dangled
I did not know into the thornbrush I had tangled
I met her on the eve of my most malcontent
Long after that good feeling had all but come and went
She brought it back but much to my dismay, she had the power to give and take away
Lover, there's a light on and the night's too long
She came to town and she rented out the place
In the thick of the Douglass Fir where the Purple Poppies play
I used to come around in the quilted afternoon
Or sometimes when the junkyard dogs bayed at the ivory moon
Through the taverns and the drugstores, over whispered countertops
She'd walk in and the screen door would slam and the gossip hounds would stop
Lover, there's a light on and the night's too long
Then one day as the Autumn fell I stepped upon her stoop
The porch swing sat there motionless and it let it's eyelids droop
She left no note,she left no trace...just a single glowing bulb
I never looked as I walked away to see that light dissolve
Give My Regrets To Broadway
The kid was two years old, was once a happy home together
And the darkness took ahold and it never did get better
So I took off in the night
Like the changing of the weather
Well it's never a fair fight and there's never a clear winner
Give my regards to baby new year
Give my regards to mother eve
Give my regrets to broadway, I'm sorry I ever had to leave
The postcards came in time for Christmas and for birthdays
And I rarely had a dime, still I hope it helped in small ways
We could, we could have been the rage
But a canyon formed between us
We could have stood upon the stage
And all the world they would have seen us
Give my regards to baby new year
Give my regards to mother eve
Give my regrets to broadway, I'm sorry I ever had to leave
Oh the unrosined bow, surely betrays the poor cello
And our dear Iago, did he not betray Othello
My good wife as she slept
Dropping dreams out on her pillow
Out the door I crept just to blend in with the shadows
November
It's probably november well it always seems like november
When the rainwash from the corner store litters the alcove below
and I sleep there I sleep in the sweat and the stink there
and it's not so bad or it's all that I had and I just gotta make my peace there
and I wonder how it all came to be
how it followed me, how it swallowed me
there were good times, it was nyc and it seemed to me the whole world
was 19 years old, brazen and bold
2 sisters, each one vied for my divided time I could not let either be
without my company
how fair would that be?
Then slowly, the old gang moved there seperate ways and there was no one left to know me
the last thing I remember..
I was bleeding in the alley with an old friend from the valley
and the stars they crowed from the telephone line
and it all comes back in fragment like refridgerator magnets
that hold the silver drops of rain to the clinging vines
the clinging vines of memory that derelict my mind
and in the cold, one afternoon I let the voices take a hold
the dialogue inside my mind had opened up
there was no stop valve to quiet it, could retire, could not expire it, I just aquired it
and in the cool rush, the synapsis in my brain threw flames high above the water
and I ran out in the street in a house dress, a crazy story teller
and the last thing I remember....
Let’s Burn The Guitars
Love came around soliticing commissions
but I dont subscribe to illicit drugs or explicit magazine subscriptions
Love will never beat down with a cane upon my doorstep
passed the peephole and the doorclick
and love is a bittersweet reminder of "every spring that's past that cannot be recovered
a wild and tenacious ephemeral truth in the end"*
and the summer, the summer sheds it's layer and bares it's womenly skin
And I peer through the gap that the chain locks strains on the door
I flip the welcome mat face down on the floor
turn the volume up too loud, oh I can't hear it now
but if a new love comes along to find the chairs and the tables gone
if the room is cold and dark and the fuel sources sparse
and if we need the wood
if we need the wood
if we need the wood lets burn the guitars
Love will never come around and stand upon my doormat
it knows I'll only answer with the duct table handle of a baseball bat
it knows I'll only answer with a broomstick and a palm slap
love will never come around because love doesn't want any of that
and if it shouts out from the street desperate on bended knee
and if it dares to ring the bell or comes to speak with something to sell
I'll peer through the gap that the chain lock strains on the door
I'll flip the welcome mat face down on the floor
turn the volume up too loud, oh I can't hear it now
but if a new love comes along to find the chairs and the tables gone
if the room is cold and dark and the fuel sources sparse
and if we need the wood
if we need the wood
if we need the wood lets burn the guitars
*Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Out On The Fringe
It's not me who's obsessed by what money can buy me
And the neighbors possessions do not overexcite me
you cant hard sell you cant advertise me
Life out on the fringe
Its not me who demands all the wealth and the power
just to light up Las Vegas all 24 hours
for more mindless chatter from the television towers
Life out on the fringe
I know a man and he fears every literary travel
and he sits in his armchair loudly pounding his gavel
and he covers his ears or his world it might unravel
I'm way out on his fringe
But I never got rich off the labor of others
or invests into what has no morals or conscious
or cares not what I sell at the market
Life out on the fringe
I dont see two kids sitting there in the play pen
and say this one is one of us and that one is one of them
and ours goes to state and there's goes to the state pen
there must be millions on this fringe
I don't see my life as something more sacred
than a peasant farmer in the fields of
but I know it's worth more than those who commit acts of hatred
Life out on the fringe
I never lost faith that peace and love heals
or have written them off as only hippy ideals
and to live by these rules is to cower and yield
Life out on the fringe
And I don't deny that empirial timbers
are whithered away and reduced to splinters
and we must some day beg our captures forgivness
I hope there on my fringe
It's not me who whispers in cladestine tones
to the masons, al queda or the skull and the bones
to the carlyle group or saudi oil tycoons
I'm way out on a fringe
I dont pray to some spiritual mechanic
to fix up the dents that we put in our planet
like joyriding teens we will finally crash it
even Jesus Christ was on a fringe
Chinatown
We struck a vein in the hills by the Sichuan border
and a wellspring rose to flood out the hollow corridor
Only five made it out in the panic and disorder
we saw a light at the end of the tunnel and we pushed on further
Two were caught and they were brought back to the prison
and the rest split up before we turned up missing
I couldnt go home because the state would come round searching
I made it to the coast and found work on a boat for fishing
Chinatown, you're a long long way from the Great Wall now
They say you can see it all from outer space
I don't see nothing in this place
but the cracks in the bricks of the next door tenement house
Two feet out the window in Chinatown
I met a man he was a dealer in salvation,
he put bodies in boxcars to sail across the ocean
and we breathed out the airholes we cut in the canvas ceiling
we slept beside one another to keep ourselves from freezing
They put me to work in a California sweat shop,
they took my wage to back pay the passage that I'd bought
If your looking for the poor, the intellectuals and the heretics,
there in the factoriesworldwide assembling all the plastic trinkets
My father five times was a great railroad survivor
In Prominatory Point when they laid down the golden spike there
I'm the son five times removed of a human cargo
and dollar power is a consumers only trade embargo
Because the snakeheads they keep tabs on the families of deserters
and for fifty thousand dollars I can keep them all from being murdered
there's a kid on the corner with a brand new 4 wheel sedan
to show that happiness is not a reward for just the best man
Sistine Chapel Ceiling
St Peter your Basilica's too much for a garbageman
Stepping off a chartered bus
Quarentined by velvet ropes, thirty five millimeter notes
To pontificate in Echo Park Los Angeles
Never thought it'd be so much like this
There's nuns and priests here, Hoosiers and Greeks
attain enlightened vertigo
in a dizzied squint to find some hidden clues in the eves
does anyone believe? Does anyone believe?
Is there a mystery in the floor beneath our feet?
There's a certain feeling to the sistine chapel ceiling
I'd be lying to ignore I let my gaze fall to the floor
I don't know which one I liked more
So it happened that the lord reached out and he touched adam
in his brightness he created us all in his likeness
by some sentimental treacle he named us all an equal
a man dies a baby is born each the others sequel
we take treasure in the pleasure of a celestial endeavor
theres a kingdom in the clouds above the weather
where the displaced all run free with a royal constituency
if there are no cooks there can be no dirty dishes
or are these all just wishes
Galileo I'm a simple man more simple than your most intuitive action
your diplomatic retraction to a vatican infraction
a man like me a man like me just lives by reaction
I'm not a catholic man I'm not a christian man
I'm just a garbageman like a buried mason with his hopes and dreams and aspirations
serving someone elses station dying in quiet desperation
livid with the fascination we are all just garbagemen
at work and on vacation, there is no other vocation
Culiacan
Evan James and Hunter Brown suburban kids in a desert town
Hunters glow was low and smooth, Evans wick was a lighted fuse
they started running dope from
Hunter had to cool it down, he got that feeling in his bones yeah
That must have set Evan off well he never needed a god damned boss around anyway
what is right and what is wrong my mother and I we went along
because the cops wont shake down a man with a family down in
Culican, Culiacan with a name so sweet I do believe they should write you in a song
don't look out to the sides and keep your dark sunglasses on
when your running dope in Culiacan
I was only three or four and there were 14 kilos in the panel door
when they took my old man away
They repossessed the hippy van bussed me and ma to the rio grande
Hunter met us on the other side and the Nogales taillights
Faded all away from
Those were the darkest times and my mothers tears flowed serpentine
in a one room speedway slum burning under the Tucson sunday
no money out no money in no cookie dough for the rolling pin
We were here and Evan was there in a cell with the gay millionaire
Holidays we'd go back where the mailboxes crept to the railroad tracks
to hitch a ride out of that mess there all looking for a new address
And all through the prison yard the peddlers spit out grapefruit hearts
I imagined a mighty tree would sprout out from that dusty sea down in
Then a couple years after Evans liberation the marriage ended its elation
Evan and Hunter never spoke again, Hunter turned into a family man
somewhere on the New Mexico plains. Then the millionaire he died of aids.
Sometimes I'd see Evan around all the streets of our hometown but he
kind of lacked a fathers charm and I was moody as a car alarm
I guess it's best we all went our own ways from
Fresh Kill In Nowhereville
The hippies swarm the micropub in their European cars
and the thrift sold it's sofa sectionals to the college row front yards
and the laughter from the rooftops hung in captioned balloons in the midnight air
until it froze in the cold cold chill fell to the earth and it shattered right there
Oh baby these are all the things your dull eyes never saw
When will you scrape the windshield of your heart, it's been too long to defrost
And all you pretty babies, I see you beating down my door
thinking maybe you can save me, so said the bull to the matador
but I'm a fresh kill here in nowhereville I know the novelty wont last
and that's a contradictory feeling, it's running out of road before the gas
When you're caught below the frostline with a hundred other rusted schemes and dreams
My Harley shouted out threw rumbling pipes but it could not sprout out wings
so I hitched into the lonesome valley, found a hotplate and a room
picked up work as it came around shoveling snow or pushing brooms
Oh baby well I know you're just trying to stay dry
Clean out the straw up in your attic, you know it never floods that high
In the woodsmoke and the snow drift well at least the strangers nod hello
far away from the chalkdust sketches, freeway wrecks, and drumming fingers
on horns that blow
And the narrowness of where you are is more ingrained in truth
Then the mantra of the city is to buy at the rumor and sell at the news
Oh baby well I know this could be the death of me
Those pigeons in your heart, did you finally set them free?
Maybe that's the only way the only way for me
those quivers in your bow, were you trying to hit me?