Vampire

She fell under his spell thirteen months ago
Ordinary love affair he sent her flowers, teddy bears
He sucked her soul right through her mouth and then he crawled away

She claws into her skin thirteen times a day
As she tries to scrape off all the memories of the times she sold herself out on the auction block and then she crawled away

A vampire lives under her bed
He stains her sheets and feeds her head with lies of
what she’s earned the right to place inside her heart
That feeling good’s not good to do

I tried to marry her once
It didn’t work too well
When I tried to fill the hole with kisses, what she missed was all the tantrums and the broken glass; so I just crawled away

What can I do? To save her is to die myself
Don’t look now she’s drowning in the well
 

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She’s Taking Me Home

Sunshine, lost time
I feel, inside
Then when I start to doubt I see what’s clearly right in front of me I’m closer
To the tiger in the night that’s haunting me; it’s not right she’s still here

She’s taking me home

Anger lingers
I point fingers
Then when I look to place the blame on someone else who bears the same resemblance to the part of me that’s hiding in the cracks, only she can lead me back

She’s picking your cellar door
You can no longer seal it
Your shadows are stripped one by one
You can’t even feel it
And everything in the dark
She’s gonna reveal it
The girl will take you home

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Swim

It’s a mechanical failure
It’s a believable rift
And she never let it grow
Because he never had to know
But now he found the weeds in the lawn

And you want to push them together
And you want to tear them apart
But the story turns again, on a dime, but in the end, we always end where we start

There’s a bloody tide rising up tonight
You can only swim so fast and you’re tiring of trying
Searching for a crime, the only one you’ll find
Is how you threw yourself away every time

It’s a predictable ending
From a shock of a start
Flip the light switch, turn around
Turn the TV upside-down
It’s still just yesterday’s news

And you thought you’d won the war
Until she pulled the carpet off the floor
And sent you tumbling home.

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George’s Little Sandbox

Before the end, before the show
Portrait in red, what do you know
It’s a one in a million opportunity

Let’s spill some blood, then hide the stain
Let’s make some bones fall down like rain
In the name of the father you shall overcome
Justify every lie by and by

Screaming in your little sandbox
We hear you
Heads turn into dust in the summer night
I see you

A broken head, a bloody heart
All for a game we did not start
And you’re up on the deck declaring victory

But what’s the cost? And who’s to pay?
I wonder what your god would say
If he saw your nepotistic coterie
Peter, Paul, rob them all
Your curtain call

You’re up in the window seat in your airplane in the air
Every breath that you steal will reveal
An angry little kid who never measured up.

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Amen

The bombs explode over my head
The angel is coming
Hear the children sing as one
They cry, “Amen”

I hold my daughter in my arms
I whisper softly, “God is here to take us home”
She cries, “Amen”
I hold my daughter in my arms
The angel is coming
Amen.

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It Comes and Goes

Twenty-seven years ago, I didn’t have this problem
Every day was like a million years
How did I run out of time?
I was carrying myself so long that I could barely breathe
I did not stop until my lungs gave out
I could not run from me

It comes and goes, it’s coming around again
You fire your gun, just as the battle ends
Took all my life to learn what I always knew
It comes and goes

And if you lay yourself down with the rain
The years well up like oceans
You’ll know when all the waves have filled you up
Cause you wake to who you are.
 

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The Echinacea Blues

Madness, that’s what it is
Packing your petrushka dolls and storming out like this
Throw them in the back of the Pontiac
And you’re on the way out the door

Kitchen chairs need mending
And I know my jokes are offending
But I love you, girl, from every deep and dark
Dust-encrusted corner of my heart

Oh baby don’t go
But if you’re leaving please remember to leave me the credit card

Well you even packed your pet turtle
Just because I let the cottage cheese curdle
But I promise to clean the fridge if you let me scratch your itch like I do

Baby I just watered your garden
I would never let your collard greens harden
But I promise to spray for ants if you give me one more chance to love you right

Take your razor and Echinacea
But leave me the credit card.

---

David

David doesn’t live here anymore
He packed his books and he went off to war
But that was seven years ago

I cannot see what you want with me because David’s gone

Fall into the trap inside your mind
What you’re looking for ain’t what you’ll find
But that’s a thousand years ago

Pretending is okay, I’ll find my way because David’s gone

I don’t know why he’s haunting me in my sleep
Drops of sweat as a shroud of fear covers me
He is gone but I hear his screams in my head
They should have just taken me instead

David doesn’t live here anymore
He pulled his pictures down and locked the door
But that was seven years ago

I’ll be okay and I’ll find my way because David’s gone.
 

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Margaret’s Dying

Me and you
So many years I think I hear you thinking sometimes without saying a word
I know you hear me too
Then she came into the world; a life unfurled before my spellbound eyes
And I was born again

Now Margaret’s crashing down on me
And all the bedtime stories I will never read
She didn’t even get a chance to place her bet
She never got to roll the dice
But that’s life

The moon’s aglow, the lights are low, the stereo is melting in the summer heat
I know I’m melting too
Over the screaming I hear Margaret breathing, lying on the couch alone
My eyes are stinging, my ears are ringing
The echoes of a life not lived
Bring a man to his knees

Now Margaret’s crashing down on me
And all the kindergarten photos I won’t see
She didn’t even get a chance to place her bet
She never got to roll the dice

And my blood is ice, I feel no pain
I paste a smile, I pace a mile or two
So you don’t hear my mind snap in two

Now Margaret’s crashing in my arms
I see her little feet, I hear her little heart
She didn’t even get a chance to place her bet
She never got to roll the dice
But that’s life.
 

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Turnabout

It is time my friends, all good things come to an end, so they say
Now the leaves have turned, and the dogs howl through the frozen day
And we never had what we thought we had

We’ve been living on borrowed time
We’ve been calling on someone else’s dime
We have feasted while others went without
Come my friends, watch the turnabout

As the end draws near you can see a cloud of fear drape the air
Because when the chance was ours, we just turned and closed our eyes to their stares
And now as the tables turn, we’ll get what we’ve rightly earned

Well I hope they have just a little more compassion and love
Cause it’s not a lot to give better than they got from us
Let the end begin, we can try again.
 

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Tattered

One more thunder
One more raindrop
One more hunger
One more heart will stop
One more nightmare
One more dip in the pool
One more cold stare
One more nail

I try to believe what my eyes can’t see
It’s a dislocation of the first degree
All the cogs in this wheel
Built to beg, borrow or steal
And the break lines are cut, I’m here for good
Raindrops falling from the past

One more cold dawn
One more shivering hand
One more headline
One more grain of sand
One more dark cell
One more wink and a smile
One more hard sell
One more nail

Raindrops made of broken glass
Raindrops falling from the past.

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September 12th Lullaby

Can we take a walk in the rain
Can we peel the pain away from our face
Let our colors melt in the puddles below
Pick our souls up from the rubble
How i’ve broken you
How you’ve broken me

Can we cry once more for our dead
Can we mourn our fathers who came before
Fighting wars for a grudge that was bigger than them
Never asking how the hate began
They killed each other’s babies
They killed each other’s wives

And if everyone believes in god
And god believes in everyone
Then why can’t i believe in you?

Maybe god just left for a minute or two
Maybe we were to tend to things while he’s gone
Don’t you wonder what he will say
When he sees his own name scrawled in blood?
And when he made our world
Did he have this in mind?

Do you like to walk in the rain
Do you play with your children every night
Do you pray for the strength to protect them from fear
And the wisdom to teach them wrong from right
Then we have more in common
Than this war we don’t understand