Thylacines

Written as comic relief for a case of writer's block on another song that got bigger than my brain...

Holding out for a miracle
Oh you could peel me off a wall
Got a feeling I can’t shake off
Man I’m living a paradox

And I’ll slowly fade
Into skeletal remains
Holding my ghostly face

    Know what I want but I can’t define it
    Out on the road just trying to find it
    Like a meteor on sunny day
    I know I’m wrong but I just can’t fight it

A part time lover - full time freak
A low plains drifter on the street
And the morning comes too soon 
For the mountains of the moon

Gold and vespertine
Air tastes like tangerines
Days passing like a dream

    Know what I want but I can’t define it
    Out on the road just trying to find it
    Like a meteor on sunny day
    I know I’m wrong but I just can’t fight it

Take a look before I slip away
I know I’m wrong but I just can’t fight it

Low Plains Drifter

Ya hear that rustling?
Hear that canyon roar?
My baby doesn't live here anymore
Bandaids on her fingers and wounded eyes
Her number off a napkin, a crooked smile

And in the morning light
The clarity confounds
With second sight
Running me aground

Bluebells hopping
Across the valley floor
Those clouds up on the mountains
Look like dinosaurs
In a moonlight meadow
Our house of straw
Made of second chances
Played to a draw

And your face went white
Cold to the touch
In the pale porch light 
I know it's not enough

Babe where are you?

It's raining on the South Platte
Thundering in Omaha
Carolina, Colorado
The Panamints, the Ouachitas
Were you holding out
Or holding on?
When you add it up
There's something wrong

I can't make this right
A widow lives alone
In a pale blue light
And he's always coming home

And on the coldest night
He's always coming home

A Widow's Song

Yesterday
Woke up to the rain
Felt like I was dreaming
All the world fitted out in gray 
I wore it for the season 

Hold my hand
Sparkle like the sun
And let me tie your laces
City lights and Lisa having fun
When we're roller skating

I remember the fucked-up weather
And the creme de menthe
Running down your sweater

It isn't love
But still it's lost in time
And the world keeps saying
"Never, never again..."

Monday comes
Sitting in my car
I think the word is broken
Wind pounds
Our crazy little town
Feels like time has frozen

Come on, come on
I wonder where you are today
Everybody duck and cover
If it's not one thing it's another

I lost track 
And now I want you back
But the world keeps saying
"Never, never again..."
"Never, never again..."

Meadowlarking

Isolate
Walk away
Inviolate

Isolate
Walk away
Inviolate

I won't hack your heart
I'm in love with your scars
Tonight

Be my fatal star
We might as well start
A fire

Saturday
Became
A tidal wave

I won't hack your heart
I'm in love with your scars
Tonight

The wind blows cross
That parking lot
And I feel cold
And I feel hot

If you think I am
Then I'm probably not
I find myself in the strangest spot

Isolate
Barricade
Immolate 

Isolate
Barricade
Immolate

All our ecstasies
Fall like leaves
And decay

Do you wait for me
In the moments in between
The days? 

I won't hack your heart
I'm in love with your scars tonight

I feel hot
But I'm probably not
I find myself in the strangest spot

As the rain falls down
On this broken town
I've lost my way the time has come

If I say I will then I probably won't 
I've never felt so far from home

Crazytown

In your mind, you leave it all behind
Drive your trouble, down the center line 
To a place in the desert where you roll, free range
A place where the rocks and the ravens, know your name

And you rise to the parallax of dawn
To a lover you long thought had gone
Your skin weirdly renewed 
In eyes of madrigal blue 
Oh maybe you just had it all 
A bit confused

	I don’t have a reason 
        I just had to run
	The sound of the highway 
        Makes me go numb 
	For a while, I can’t feel
	Anything, but the wheels

But it’s no good
When it comes on like a drug
This fatal vision of starry wanderlust 
The pikers each take their turn
You feel the schadenfreude burn
Think maybe a life’s just to learn
Ya get fuck all

	So take the wheel 
        Before I succumb 
	The sound of the highway 
        Makes me go numb
	For a while, I can’t feel 
	For a while, shit gets real
	
	Drawn like a moth to a Texaco sign 
	Pick up the phone and fish for a dime  
	I can’t make it ring it and I can’t make you rhyme
	Running around in this parasite - paradise - parasite - paradise  
	Burn it all down

And I’m back home
In a world like a maze
Oh it holds me in a perilous gaze
My mission sorely suspect 
With dots I could not connect 
Oh but it’s you babe I resurrect
In the end

	So run your fingers over the scars 
	The beat of your heart’s like a song from a star
	Shining down - on me
	Shining down - over me 
        Won’t you stay - here a while
	Won’t you stay - here a while

Maricopa Highway Blue

I remember
When the world asked me to dance 
I said “No thanks man, I’ll just watch from stands...”
Cause everything here feels like it’s shaking
And by the time it gets done all the good seats are taken  

There’s a ghost in my room 
It's been talking all night long  
It might be the truth but why does it feel so wrong
To believe? 

	I am trying to connect 
	With whatever the corners collect
	And slow walk my ass back from the edge
	Tonight...

Oh sometimes the days just seem a bit lost
With a head like a mule and a face full of moths
Who knew a dream could be so misshapen?
And float like the dust down to this station

Where I wait for a train - oh that never arrives
It’s jumping the tracks and into another life 
Just not mine

	And it’s blowing the valves in my heart 
	With one fucked-up character arc 
	I don’t think it should be this hard 
	To reach for the ring or wish on a star 
	Tonight...

What the Corners Collect

What The Corners Collect

The storm plays out her course
And morning found me crawling north
The stranger inside me came
But I don't really know his name

And something's gone awry
Thorny plans in a cactus sky
Crushing down like stone
When I'm living alone

These are words from coarser times
Fractured and spoken in blackbird rhyme
These are days of touch and go
Don't lose hope, you never know

I held it once before
But all the pain and revolving doors
Pinned me to the ground
You know I heard you were in town

These are words from coarser times
Fractured and spoken in blackbird rhyme
These are days of touch and go
Don't lose hope, you never know

Lonesome Cactus Song

Out where the highway ends
A skinwalker with a talisman
Getting lost, maybe, I don't know
The saturation overloads

Don't know why I hesitate
Got nothing to negotiate
I'm going nowhere in particular
Those clouds are very lenticular

Traffic signs and broken lines
Slipping through a crack in time
I can feel it come and go
It's just so good to lose control

Oh the days just are
They crash like cars
And disintegrate
Into nights so dark 
and shot with stars
They pixelate

I can feel the tension build
Keeps crunching up against my will
Makes me wanna pay for my mistakes
I'd be there but its too late

This pantomime is so sublime
That sound you make when you arch your spine
It's so clear in retrospect
Where the canyons intersect

Oh the days just are
They crash like cars
And disintegrate
Into nights so long 
and shot with stars
They pixelate

Oh the days just are
They crash like cars
And disintegrate
Into nights so long 
and shot with stars
They pixelate

Mile Marker 42

Anymore 
This shit is worthless
Ain’t got no tack
Peeling up from the surface
Like some kinda patch
The overreach
Is looking weak

Every time I cut it down to size
The next thing I know it multiplies
And suddenly it all seems so overrated

Anymore
It’s like a circus
Coming off the tracks
Getting bored, getting nervous
Something gonna snap
The shaking fault 
Ain’t worth the salt

Crazy stardust trikes again
Floating through the mise-en-scène
And just when it feels like I’ve had enough
Pain and beauty always seem to hook up

The siren’s cry
My lullaby 

Guess I’m picking up where you left off
If only the thing in my head would stop
Oh see the child oh when the world was new
Somehow knows just what to do
Oh before it all got confused

Anymore

Contraptions in D

Contraptions In D (parts 1 - 3)

Rolling underground
And still fucking around
With a story I tell myself
Where I should be somewhere else

I summon up a dream
A wicked change of scene
Like a star struck matador
Forgot what I came here for

Another life? 
Another chance?
More like a memory
Coming through in technicolor
In a beautiful catastrophe

Wild and undefined
Bending towards the night

The city’s made of sand
And subtle slight of hand
Strange how our lassitude
Feels like altitude

Different trains and different lanes
But it’s all temporary
Endless sky and endless miles
Looking for sanctuary
Time passes and it feels like you’re moving
When you’re stationary

Wild and undefined
Chasing the sublime

Searching for Cibola

Searching For Cibola

Tawny gold and midnight blue
A daze of dancer red
Secretly cerulean
Trying to pretend

A warm and yellow orange
Cold and wintergreen 
Cloudy in November gray
Safely in between 

We’re stuck in a box with nothing to do
So you paint me and I paint you
Something surreal
And just what you feel  
‘Cause everything is ill-defined
In this paucity of light 
	
Oh no what have I done?
A paintbrush in your hands
You wield it like a fucking sword 

That doesn’t look like me!
Since when do I have horns?
I’m a terror in your eyes 
So freakishly deformed

Shit’s getting real
And breaking my brain
This was one crap idea	
You’re cutting a rose 
I’m walking the plank
Here inside our funhouse mirror 
Where the weather’s getting weird
And I am everything I feared

Oh baby please come back
I didn’t mean it 
Don’t let this fever dream
Come between us

Like Canvas

Day-glow destiny 
Dangling from a tree
You’re gonna have to pardon my 
Mediocrity 
Legend in the rough
If I rotated faster would it be enough? 

The moonlight shining down on homicidal streets
Softly glistening 
And through a fence  darkly
The raccoons have crashed the party 

And I can’t tell what’s real anymore
Making me squint 
Bellybutton lint
And I don’t know what’s cool anymore
Just a buncha crap 
Think I’ll take nap - for real

Heading out to sea  
Islands of the damned 
I’m gonna live a life of
Wanton piracy
Your knickers a twist 
For all the Monday mornings I will never miss

I wanted to feel me some spiritual shit
But something tells me 
Maybe I was born to be the universe’s bitch

I’m gonna spend my life rolling backwards 
Burning joint to joint 
Never quite on point 
With every step feeling awkward  
Lacking all finesse
Making a big mess 

And it don’t taste like Coca Cola
Don’t know what it is
Just some kinda jizz
And they don’t know what’s cool anymore
Handing out nouns 
To a shakedown in the cloud   
You mutha-fuckas 
You mutha-fuckas

Freakshow Index

Natchez Trace

The Fisher Girl

The days deny what night divines, shakes it from your hands
And sunlight has vaporized these fragments of a plan
The joker in a shiny suit is striking up the band
And dancing as we disappear like cities in the sand

I hear you in the canyon and I hear you on the stairs
I can see standing on the dunes with seaweed in your hair
The moonlight on your fragile frame you're floating in mid air
And when my vanity is spent I hope that you are spared

You're a river
And you're the sea
A freak of nature born to torture me
I'm trying to swim 
But keep downing in your wake
Losing focus as our imagine pixelates

Oh but I 
Just wanna see you again
Oh I 
Just wanna see you again

I am sending a transmission in heartache megahertz
But in my broken alphabet it probably won't work
At least I know that we once burned like diamonds in the dirt
But all I hear is static now and that's what really hurts

Now I've been listened all night long to this radio
And when the morning comes crashing in it's like an overdose
Sick and drifting all these years, where I don't know
Can't seem to ever find my angle of repose

You're a desert
And you're the wind
A force of nature that is arguing for sin

And we should leave her
Cross the interstate
And be together when the world disintegrates

Oh but I 
Just wanna see you again
And I 
Just wanna hold you again
And maybe I just want to scream with you again
Oh maybe I just want to leave you again

Far Western

She came in 
Like the wind
On a dark December day

Saturnine
And half inclined 
To slowly drift away

I can try
But you can fly 
Like a pretty bird of prey

Let me fall
Till I finally find my way
To another world

And she holds an aching world 
In her planetary arms
Reckon I was born to be a widow
From the start
Amaryllis night and day 
Like a shadow cross my heart

Let me fall
Till I finally find my way
To another world
And it feels like home

And she calls 
Out my name
And I finally found my way
To another world

Amaryllis Night and Day

I didn’t mean it 
Or maybe I did 
It’s hard to be sure  
Who needs to be sure?

When snow covers the highway 
What did that sign say? 
Oh from our room 
I see the moon

Moonlight on your face 
The curvature of space 
Around your waist 
In these quiet days

My heart is breaking 
I kept you waiting 
Somewhere on Mars 
Hey, there’s a star

Starlight on your face 
The curvature of space 
Around your waist 
In these final days

Starlight on your face 
I’m so messed up 
The curvature of space 
I’m so messed up 
Around your waist 
I’m so messed up 
In these final days
I’m so messed up

The Curvature of Space

A song about sea monsters, darkness, and light. God only knows where this shit comes from...

Eschatology

The Sea Comes at Midnight

I need you - for protection
Against vampires - and elections
I need you - when it’s a quarter to four 
And I’ve run out - of metaphors

Don’t remind me
Don’t define me
Here and now
This bitter end 
These hollow men
Choking on the present tense

I’ll need you - when the darkness settles
And the streets fill - with broken rebels
I’ll need you - when the sky starts falling
You know it’s gonna start falling
Cause it never stopped - falling

Don’t remind me
Don’t define me
Here and now
This bitter end 
These hollow men
Choking on the present tense

All I see is misery 
Burning from your finger tips
And all I want is a perfect world 
And Sparries in the Pilderpips

Exoskeleton

And underneath the fixity
Sure as it’s day it’s slippery
And always out of reach
Frozen and alone

These visions of the former world
Enchanting how they twist and curl
And fade before my eyes
Trying to atone

We kicked around in summertime
Evergreens and sugar pine
So tall in aspect now
And holding back the wind

And I know there’s no escape
The years like spiders at my nape
They spin and pull me down
Closer to the ground

And I know there’s no escape
As decades drift across the lake
And try for certainty that can never be

These visions of the former world
The pretty boys the distant girls
Harbored in my chest 
And holding back the wind

Am I old enough?
Do I know enough?
Am I strong enough?
Do I really love?

Am I old enough?
Am I cold enough?
Am I strong enough?
Do I really love?

The Former World

Riding pale
Broken hearted
Gonna set sail
For that darkness
Just burning time
Brakes on the cradle
And a candle for your eyes
In this crazy little town 
You don't even try

And nobody knows 
How it got started
But the devil takes care 
Of his harlots
They come spiraling down
Selling skin in the garden
There's an image in my chest 
Where he carved it

Home again
In the land of the little rain

I'm a hand-me-down
So unwanted
And all of this life 
Just feels haunted
Just breathing time
Food for the spider 
In the days between stations
In this crazy little town
Where we're all wasted

Home again
In the land of little rain

Owens Valley Song

Stay close to me
Whoever you are
Your lips taste like pavement
But your eyes have the spark

I am alone
I've wandered for years
Lied to myself
Until I'm weird

So hold me
Under the moon tonight
And I'll wait for you
Until the oceans rise

Hey crocodile
I like your teeth
The way you move
The way you deceive
Oh you dangle my body over a cliff
It feels like I'm falling
Like maybe I slipped 
Through your hands

So kiss me
Under the steel bridge
And I'll wait for you until my head caves in

Oh your sin
Is so hard to shake 
The sound of the sirens keeps me awake
I'm underwater, I'm in between
A perfect vision and a broken dream 
Made for two

So let's do it again
In the tall dead grass
And I'll wait for you 
Beside the overpass

Land of Little Rain

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