2 CHICAGO IS BURNING

We throw out our bodies on the fire and we die
Settle into ashes as the flames keep piling high
We tossed and spread the kerosene and alcohol
The ethylene ignited cardboard homes

The second in a hundred and again as many years
Street signs, Skyscrapers and Names
State Street, What a great street
When the places and the people stayed the same

Winter beats the Summer on the worst ones
I fall in love again on the first ones
Larbon vapor lines burn as a grid
Like the burning summer evenings
Like my fingertips did
Like the burning summer evenings
Like my fingertips did

This town is choking on our filth
Obstinate displays of wealth
Clog our Lincoln, Wicker, Rogers Park
Here's to your health Chicago
Fiddle as we burn
Nevermore, Nevertheless
Build it up and tear it down and never learn

3 TURNSTYLES

With a light of this match i could
Burn this place to the ground
Then fire engines'd scream down
Crowded streets onto the scene
and then I'd make it rain
Numb myself to never say your name
That I've uttered in anger
Said with confusion
Laughed over nervously
Said without sympathy
I'm not shedding tears for you.
All those lonely night that I've
said feels like i might as well be dead

No more smiles; revolving like turnstiles
No more deliberation; analytical creations

I'm incapable, a predepressionist
This is delivered with courage
Muddled in tension
Lashed out in honesty
Someone come and save me
I'm dying to tell you
This kills it forever
It was already dead
I'm dying to tell you
This kills us forever
We were already dead
And I'm just fine
I haven't called you
but I haven't had the time
Thoughts are stale
I've been revolving like turnstiles

4 ASA PHELPS IS DEAD

Hey brother can you spare the time?
Skin and bones that's melting in a backwards way to grow.
Out of heart and out of mind
And kiss me in the rearview when you go
Dying at 23, I'm trying on my apathy
With a tired conversation floating in this ether sky,
Tried again too many times, and doesn't it get worse?
Sit and stare!

Seems like we're running out of dimes.
Bodies that we burn as fuel, irreversible decline.
Pocket lint and turpentine
Warm my insides, Wash these ashes from my eyes
Death with an attitude, I'm putting on my Sunday suit
Tired as a conversation held one too many times
A year or two or three or ten or twenty more
Waiting!

5 ALL THE WEEK


6 THE OLD TIMER S 2x4

walking dead on two burned feet
do you have anything left to say to me?
from barber chairs and baseball gloves
to calling names and slaps and drugs from
son, you could have been someone
to hey there, meet my only son
lost in the mail for a convenient month.
a graduation unattended
500 miles, five hundred days
we'll never talk, let's count the ways
we fake it over every break
and you kick yourself for making this mistake

actions dismantle litigation
and i thought this would be easier for me
another forced smile on vacation
another disappointment paves itself into a two way street
and i see you inside myself
i want to climb out of my skin
i see you in myself every day and once again,
i was the worst mistake,
your connection to a thirty year hate
i tried hard not to believe it
i'll try harder to feel it

here's to you


7 HERE COMES THE NEIGHBOURHOOD


8 LIGHT BREATHING(ME AND MARTHA PLIMPTON IN A FANCY
ELEVATOR)

Me and Martha Plimpton in an elevator
Her golden labrador kissed my index finger
Two in the morning, Summer saturated
I'd been drinking and it'd been raining

And it felt so strange because I didn't know what to say
And when she smiled I turned away

But that's so like me
Timid, Self-conscious, Crippling
She seemed so friendly
And I must've seemed uninteresting
Soaked from walking
And smelled like boozed and cigarettes
I stood there listening
To hear light breathing

And I wanted to say that I really loved her films
And I wanted to make her laugh and smile
But I stood still

I managed to mutter "Hello"
Her eyes shining in the fancy elevator lights
I stood awkwardly, hands fluttering
The doors parted and she said goodnight to me

And her voice was like a song that wouldn't leave my head
And I thought Martha I'm running on empty
And I couldn't help but think I'd missed another chance to live
but isn't that the way it always

The way it always

9 GHOST STORIES

Raindrops fell without rage
Eyes half-closed
Skin like dark gray metal
Inanimate and cold
Another flame to my face
The smell of sulfur lingering away.

You're here for the perforation of the heart.
Precise incisions
Anesthetic dreams
It's broken like a ticking watch that need repairs
Shattered glass, exposed face, waiting to be wound.
Wounded like a friend of mine
Who eased his pain by killing time
Not letting it kill him.

When you wake up you won't remember anything.
But that night the ghosts wailed in the windstorm.
Cries sharp like a crescent moon
A sickle grazed against the skin
My breath fogged up the window
So I let the night breathe in.

I let the ghosts into my room
and listened to their screams
incessant whisperings
Singing, like music to my ears
Like music to my ears
A flash of life like lightning
Electric, blinding, blue
Reminded me of you


10 106 SOUTH

Our trip had ended
I didn't know what I had to do
Who really cares at all?
We gotta get away somehow
We settled on a place where the open road had closed
And we tried too many times before

And I spent the night alone
With three things on my mind
Money, Pills and Girls
Money, Thrills and Girls
Been looking through the pages of some magazine
that I've read a thousand times
And the food all starts to taste the same
and it's 6:09am and there's nothing on TV
and I'm fucked just look at me

Watching Simpsons
Afraid to call you
I know i fucked up
I know i owe you
Seven hundred
Please don't hate me
I'll get a job
And I'll pay you back
Somehow

One more night alone
and you can take it
There'll be more tomorrow
Same magazine and tasteless food
Same TV screen
Same shitty mood

and I feel like it can't get worse
and I feel like it can't get worse
and I feel like it can't get worse


11 MINUTE

Another day chock full of choices of things to hate
Another forehead, cobwebby, dull, throbbing, almost pain
Another obstrusive reminder of things I hoped were long gone
Another obstrusive reminder of things I hoped were long gone!

Gone and forgotten,
My stomach feels rotten
My shoes are all soaked
And my socks are all cotton

My insides are black from the smoking and pain
and every damn song is fucking the same
This same goddamn train
glides soft through the rain
and I sit and dizzily wait!


12 THE LAST ONE

Tired of these drunken evenings
Listening to my staggered breathing
Nowhere to fall back in but to sleep
You're beautiful in dreams
Where words pour from my mouth in streams
Rivers I could never recreate
I dreamed you traced worlds against my back
I dreamed you'd never known me
last night i said that this would be my last
You took so many pages
The same dead words in different phrases
So much I'm almost out of ink
Woke up January rain
Idly sliding down the window pane
I had a dream, You taught me how to speak
I wrench my hands around my neck
'cause I didn't speak
'cause I was suffocating
It's about time I started to believe

I promise this will be the Last One!
I promise this will be the Last One!
I promise this will be the Last One!

13 (SECRET SONG)OL' MEXIXO WAY

[whistle]
[assorted cowboy calls]

ALRIGHT!

Well I shot a man in Louisville about one year ago
He was looking at me cock-eyed and I guess it goes to show,
Jack Daniels and a pistol can be a powerful enemy.
Especially when the whiskey inside me!

Gotta Rob, Tussle and Run from a Federal P.I.
I dont mind telling you that I shot the guard just to watch him die.
And he's still hot on my trail and my truck driving off the rail
Going South bound on the my way down 55

Well I'm prisonbound, they're gonna send me down the river the end of the day
So I'm jumping in my truck and heading down
Ol' Mexico Way!

Well, In Salt Lake City, Utah there's a warrant on my head
For a girl in a bordello that someone left for dead
No, it wasn't me but I must admit that I was in town at the time,
drunk and shooting guns beneath the desert sky

Well I'm prisonbound, they're gonna send me down the river the end of the day
So I'm jumping in my truck and heading down
Ol' Mexico Way!


I've got 500 miles until I'm free
When I hit the Rio Grande "John Law" can't do nothing to me
I've 500 dollars and 5 bullets in my gun
and If I have to, I'll unload everyone

[wicked harmonica solo!!!]

Well I'm prisonbound, they're gonna send me down the river the end of the day
So I'm jumping in my truck and heading down
Ol' Mexico Way!
Ol' Mexico Way!
Ol' Mexico Way!
Ol' Mexico Way!
Ol' Mexico Way!

WOO HOOO
Holy Shit!
Call the ambulance! CALL EM'!
I need another beer.
I'm going home!
Did you guys bring your guns?