1. TORCHES TOGETHER

Why burn poor and lonely under a bowl or under a lampshade
Or on the shelf beside the bed
Where at night you lay turning like a door on its hinges?...
First on your left side, then on your right side... then your left side again.
Why burn poor and lonely?
Tell all the stones we're gonna make a building...
We'll be cut into shape and set into place
Or if you'd rather be a window, I'll gladly be the frame,
Reflecting any kind words, we'll let in all their blame...
And ruin our reputation all the same.
So never mind our plan making, we'll start living...
Anyway, aren't you unbearably sad?
Then why burn so poor and lonely?

We'll be like torches!
We'll be like torches!
We'll be like torches... OH!!
We'll be torches together... TORCHES TOGETHER!!
We'll be like torches!
We'll be like torches... with whatever respect our tattered dignity demands,
Torches together... hand in hand.

Why pluck one string... what good is just one note?
Oh, one string sounds fine, I guess... but we were once 'one notes',
We were lonely wheat quietly ground into grain...
What light and momentary pain!
So why the safe distance, this curious look?
Why tear out single pages when you can throw away the book?
Why pluck one string when you can strum the guitar?

Strum the guitar!
Strum the guitar!
Strum the guitar... with no beginning, with no end.
Take down the guitar and strum the guitar!
Strum the guitar if you're afraid.
And I'm afraid and everyone's afraid and everyone knows it,
But we don't have to be afraid anymore.

You played the flute, but no one was dancing,
You sang a sad song... but none of us cried.
You played the flute, but no one was dancing,
And you sang a sad song, and none of us cried.
You played the flute, but no one was dancing,
You sang a sad song... but none of us cried.
You played the flute, but no one was dancing,
And you sang a sad song... you sang such a sad song.


2. JANUARY 1979

January, 1979 saw a terrible crash (and couldn't help but laugh.)
My ear pressed against the pass like a glass on a wall of a house in a photograph.
My forehead no longer sweet with the holy kisses worthy of your fiery lips.
I was floating in a peaceful sea 'rescued' by a sinking ship.
If I could become the servant of all - no lower place to fall. you watched me like a 10 car highway wreck with detached, vulgar curiosity. this looking
down at the tops of the hats of us passers-by from your 7th story balcony... from such a height you missed the creatures too small for sight carry on covert
conversation and the misguided insects crowned me their grasshopper king with a dance of celebration! after years with a crown on my head I've grown
overfed, unconcerned, and comfortably numb kept busy indulging in pleasures of the wealthy (someone make me afraid of what I've become!) At the first sign
of possible trouble I turned my heels and ran (Oh, I'll never learn) my life is a cup of sugar I borrowed before time began and forgot to return, it was a
matter of time - I always said I could see now I'm going blind, it was a matter of miserable time -- but I heard somewhere there was a cure for useless eyes?


3. TIE ME UP! UNTIE ME!

I was looking at the leaves, climbing to the tops of the trees...
But you were nowhere to be found;
Just beneath all the green you were buried like a little seed...
Among the roots and underground.
I was licking at the leaves, but I was in short sleeves and you,
You were like some sickness that I caught;
And my sweetheart moved away, swept off like garbage in the alleyway...
And I need more grace than I thought.

(Oh, please, brother, I am far... brother, I am far away... brother, I am far away from everything.
Oh, brother, I am far... brother, I am far away... brother! I am far away from everything good!)

She's like a hot cloth on a fevered head,
And like a needle she leads me (while I follow like thread)
Tie me up! Untie me! All this wishing I was dead is getting old...
IT'S GETTING OLD!!
... it goes on, but it's old.

I was swimming through the waves for what must have been days...
But could find no relief;
When I started sinking down I thought for certain I would drown...
Until I saw you in the ocean,
Underneath all the bright colored fish tell of a treasure in a dull shell...
"Such subtlety, so easily missed!"
You, my hidden pearl of pure and perfect love,
And I'm the living example of 100% the opposite of this.

(If I ask the same questions... well, yes, sir, I ask the same questions...
Well, maybe I repeat myself from time to time.
But if I ask the same questions... and then I know I ask the same questions,
It's because everyone who answers me is a liar!!)

She's like the hot cloth on a fevered head,
And like a needle she leads me (while I follow like thread)
But you untied me... didn't You untie me, Lord?
And now I haven't even thought about killing myself in almost five months.


4. LEAF

If you fail to see a problem, which I find hard to believe,
Or if you're hanging on from branches licking honey from the leaves;
You say, "The hopelessness of living... and the childishness of suicide!"
But there's a call to love my brother that can never be destroyed.

However much you talk... however well you talk,
You make a certain sense, but it's still only stupid talk.
However much I strut around... however loud I sing,
The shining One inside me won't say anything.

Oh, to want one thing!
Oh, to want one thing!
(Oh, the purity of heart)
Oh, to want one thing!
Oh, to want one thing!

And you'll remind me how I said you were a quiet bed in all my noise to rest...
Well, I was charming you at best.
Can you remember, dear, my saying how my coming here was a terrible fall,
As we crept like thieves along your bedroom hall?
I'd come down and touch your eyelids, but if you stay up too late
I'll throw you back into the cupboard with all the chipped and dirty plates,
Like the carnival game with the bottleneck and rubber ring...
Where even if you win, even then you don't win.

(All I want is to want one thing....)


5. DISASTER TOURISM

Call me outside, I'll come running down...
You call me outside, I'll come running down.
Call me outside, I'll come running down...
You call me outside, I'll come running down.

When I satisfied each need invented by my eyes,
I was a nest by a fox's hole or dirt underneath your boot soles.
When I satisfied each need invented by my eyes,
Till it was nothing like I'd imagined.

Like cocaine, their green eyes fixed on the television to pass the time,
Until their two miles of elegant blinds halfway raised for the watching as you walked by:
"Look, come to the window... she carries a candle at mid-day
While the sun's still so high!"
But you knew better than to pay mind to what people and the devil say.

Call me outside, I'll come running down into your vacant, intoxicating night.
If you call me outside to their haunted streets, their red electric lights!
Oh, I'm on the sad side of a nowhere town, but sister I'm all you've got,
So call me outside, I'll come running down... then, not another word.


6. SEVEN SISTERS

He made the world a grassy road before our bare, wandering feet...
(He made the world a grassy road before our bare, wandering feet)
Then crushed the stones into the softest sand between our toes...
(Then crushed the stones into the softest sand between our toes)
But we're wondering where to sleep,
Oh, but clever words on pages turn to fragments, circles, points and lines,
And they cover them like carpets with graceful, meaningless, ornamental designs.

Come quick, You Light that knows no evening... come, alone to the alone!
There are a thousand half-smiles well worth leaving for to take your madness home,
And You dance inside my chest where no one sees You,
But sometimes I see You.

(Come quick, You Light that knows no evening... come, alone to the alone.
There's a thousand half-loves well worth leaving for to take your madness home,
And You dance inside my chest, etcetera... etcetera... ETCETERA!!)

Oh, rejoice, the Cleansing of my lips... rejoice, Salvation of my soul!
I still have a thousand half-loves... oh, my God!
I want to shoot myself just thinking about it!
And you think I don't mean what I say?
WELL, I MEAN EVERY WORD I SAY!!

I threw a small stone down at the reflection of my image in the water...
(I threw the stones down at the reflection of my image in the water)
And it altogether disappeared.
I burst as it shattered through me like a bullet through a bottle...
And I'm expected to believe that any of this is real.


7. THE SOVIET

God is love and love is real, but the dead are dancing with the dead,
And whatever's charming disappears while all things lovely only hurt my head
As I gather stones from fields like pearls of water on my fingers' ends
(And I carefully wrap them up in boxes... safe from windows...)
From things that break!!

As the night-time shined like day it saw my sorry face and hair a mess
But it liked me best that way... besides, how else could I confess?
When I looked down like if to pray,
Well, I was looking down her dress... good God!
Please, catch for us the foxes in the vineyard... the little foxes.

So turn your ears, you musicians, to silence
Because they only come out when it's quiet,
Their tails brushing over your eyelids...
Oh, wake up, sleepers, and rise from the dead!
Or the fur that they shed that's gonna lay on your bed
In a delicate orange-ish cinnamon red... ah, but I don't need this!
I don't need this!
For I have my loves... I don't need this.


8. PAPER HANGER

And not one motion her gesture could I forget,
The prettiest bag lady I ever met...
Pushing her cart in the rain, then gathering plastic and glass
She watched the day pass,
Not hour by hour... but pain by pain.
I was a basket filled with holes, and she was the sand I tried to hold
That ran out behind me as I swung with some invisible hand.

I stopped believing, you start to move
(She was like wine turned to water then turned back to wine)
I stopped my leaving and the better man bloomed
(And you can pour us out and we won't mind)

I was dead then alive,
She was like wine turned to water then turned back to wine;
You can pour us out, we won't mind,
As scratch around the mouth of the glass, "My life is no longer mine."

And if you're still looking for a blanket, sweetie,
I'm sorry, I'm no sort of fabric;
But if you need a tailor... then take your torn shirt, stumble up my stairs,
And mumble your pitiful prayers and in your tangled, knotted sleep,
Our midnight needles go to work until all comfort and fear flows in one river
Down in the shop by the mirror where you see yourself whole... and it makes you shiver.

I stopped believing, you start to move
(She was like wine turned to water then turned back to wine)
I stopped my leaving and the better man bloomed
(And you can pour us out and we won't mind)

I was dead then alive,
She was like wine turned to water then turned back to wine;
You can pour us out, we won't mind,
As scratch around the mouth of the glass, "Our lives our not our own."

Even the wind lay still,
Our essence was fire and cold and movement, movement...
Oh, if they ask you for the sign of the father in you,
Tell them it's movement, movement, movement and... repose.


9. MY EXIT, UNFAIR

My exit unobserved,
And my homesickness absurd...
I said "water" expecting the Word would satisfy my thirst,
Talking all about the second and third
When I haven't understood the first.

Jonah, where's that boat going... your ship set with eager sails?
There's a swirling storm soon blowing, and no use, fishermen,
In rowing from the consecrated whale!

And just like the clouds, they bring a darkness and a hard rain's gonna fall,
I felt the crowd bring a loneliness and a hard rain, a hard rain's gonna fall.

And she'd always weight me down,
But, afraid I might need her, I dragged her around,
It's best to keep close sackcloth and ash in a whitewashed town;
She wore that phony smile on her face,
I guess like a bandage on a wounded place,
While I kept the keys to every old lock just in case.

Rehearsed indifference tossed aside,
Our narrow arms spread wide,
"What unseen pen etched eternal things on the hearts of human kind...
But never let them in our minds?"

Oh, the clouds they brought a darkness and a hard rain's gonna fall,
And all my laughter ends in emptiness and a hard rain's gonna fall.
My every medicine causes more illness and a hard rain's gonna fall,
And until I let you go I didn't know, you were never mine...
You were never mine at all.

But now I spend my days in ever-increasingly complicated ways,
Convincing myself of the rightness of each word I say.
My exit, unfair if unobserved!
My exit, unfair if unobserved!
My exit, unfair...
Ya sabur, subhannallahi, a'udhu billahi minash-shaitanir-rajim,
al-hamdu lilllah, bismillahir rahmanir rahim.


10. FOUR WORD LETTER (PT. TWO)

I wrote a four word letter... with post-script in crooked lines,
"Though I'd lived I'd never been alive."
And you know who I am... you held my hem as I traveled blind,
Listening to the whispering in my ear, soft but getting stronger,
Telling me the only purpose of my being here is to stay a bit longer.
Stealing a bicycle chain as the handlebars crashed to the ground,
And the back wheel detached from the frame, it kept rolling, yeah,
But aimlessly drifting around.

Oh, doubters, let's go down... let's go down, won't you come on down?
Oh, doubters, let's go down... down to the river to pray.
"Oh, but I'm so small I can barely be seen... how can this great love be inside of me?"
Look at your eyes.... they're small in size, but they see enormous things.

Wearing black canvas slippers in our frog-on-a-lily-pad pose,
We sewed buttons and zippers to Chinese pink silk and olive night clothes.
If you could someday stop by somehow we'll show you the pictures and fix you some tea...
See, my dad's getting a bit older now, and just unimaginably lonely!

Oh, pretenders, let's go down... let's go down, won't you come on down?
Oh, pretenders, let's go down... down to the river to pray.
"Oh, but I'm so afraid" or "I'm set in my ways"
But He'll make the rabbits and rocks sing His praise.
"Oh, but I'm too tired, I won't last long."
No, He'll use the weak to overcome the strong!
Oh, Amanda, let's go down... let's go down, won't you come on down?
Mama, Nana, let's go down... down in the dirt by the river to pray.

(A wick to fit the wax... wood to fit the wire)

You strike the match... why not be utterly changed to fire?
To sacrifice the shadow and the mist of a brief life you never much liked?
So if you'd care to come along, we're gonna curb all our never-ending, clever complaining,
As who's ever heard of a singer criticized by his song?
Though we hunger, though all that we eat brings us little relief,
We don't know quite what else to do;
We have all our beliefs, but we don't want our beliefs...
God of Peace, we want You.


11. CAROUSELS

On a bus ride into town, I wondered out loud, "Why am I going to town?"
As I looked around at the billboards and the stores I thought, "Why do I look around?"
And I kissed the filthy ground... the first dry spot I found...
I didn't have to wonder why I was laying down.

Before long I was too cold... took a bus back to the station,
I found a letter left by a pay phone with no return contact
And it read like a horn blown by some sad angel,
"Bunny, it was me... it was me who let you down"
It was the shyest attempt I'd ever seen at conversation.

But if I didn't have You as my guide, I'd still wander lost in Sinai,
Counting the plates of cars from out-of-state,
How I could jump in their path as they hurry along!
And You surround me, You're pretty but You're all I can see
Like a thick fog...
If there was no way into God,
I would never have laid in this grave of a body for so long.

And St. Cyril's fair always came through the first week of September
But it's already the 19th... and there's no sign of it...
Yet I have a hard time remembering all the things I should remember
And a hard time forgetting all the things that I was supposed to forget.
And, Christ, when You're ready to come back,
Then I think I'm ready for You to come back;
But if You want to stay wherever exactly it is You are,
That's okay, too... it's, it's really none of my business.

And if I didn't have You as my guide, I'd still wander lost in Sinai
Or down by the tracks watching trains go by
To remind me: there are places that aren't here.
And I had a well but all the water left,
So I'll go ask Your forgiveness with every breath,
And if there was no way into God,
I would never have laid in this grave of a body... so long, dear.


12. SON OF A WIDOW

I'll ring Your doorbell
Until You let me in...
And I can no longer tell
Where "You" end and "I" begin.

Grape on the vine, grape on the vine,
We've been alone a long time.
Grape on the vine... why not be crushed to make wine?

Pay no attention to me
Dancing with my girl...
With every intention to be failures in this world.

Grape on the vine, grape on the vine,
We've been alone a long time.
Grape on the vine... why not be crushed to make wine?

Six of my closest friends
Will dig up the ground...
All my accomplishments
Gently lowered down.

Grape on the vine, grape on the vine,
We've been alone a long time.
Grape on the vine... all is the same to the souls of those so much resigned.
Grape on the vine, grape on the vine,
We've been alone a long time.
Grape on the vine, grape on the vine...

The Son of the widow
You raised from the dead...
Where did His soul go
When He died again?