The Photo Album
Album - 19 settembre 2001 - Debaser id 21657

It's gotten late and now I want to be alone.
All of our friends were here, they all have gone home
and here I sit on the front porch watching
the drunks stumble forth into the night.

You gave me a heart attack, I did not see you there.
I thought you had disappeared so early away from here

This is the chance I never got to make a move, but
we just talk about the people we've met in the last five years
and will we remember them in ten more.

I let you bum a smoke, you quit this winter past.
I've tried twice before, but like this, it just will not last.

Whenever I come back, the air on Railroad is making the same sounds,
And the shop fronts on Holly are dirty words (asterisks in for the vowels)
We peered through the windows, new bottoms on barstools but the people remain the same.
With prices inflating, as if saved from the gallows.
There's a bellow of buzzers and the people stop working and they're all so excited.

Passing through unconscious states, when I awoke, I was on the highway.

With your hands on my shoulders, a meaningless movement, a movie script ending.
And the patrons are leaving, now we all know the words were true
in the sappiest songs (yes, yes)

I'll put them to bed, but they won't sleep, they're just shuffling the sheets,
they toss and turn (you can't begin to get it back)

Passing through unconscious states, when I awoke, I was on the onset of a later stage:
The headlights are beacons on the highway.

When we laugh indoors the blissful tones bounce off the walls, and fall to the ground
Reel the hardwood back to let them loose from decades trapped and listen so still
This city is my home construction noise all day long and gutter punks bumming change,
So I breed thicker skin and let my lustrous coat fill in and I'll never admit that

I loved you Guinevere

I've always fallen fast, with too much trust in the promising,
that no one's ever been here, so you can quell those wet fears,
and I want purity, I must have it here right now, but don't you get me started now.

December's chill comes late our days get darker and we wait for this direness to pass
there are piles on the floor of artifacts from dresser drawers that I'll help you pack.

I intentionally wrote it out
to be an illegible mess
You wanted me to write you letters,
but I'd rather lose your address
and forget that we'd ever met
and what did or did not occur.
Sitting in the station, its all a blur

of dancehall hips,
pretentious quips,
a boxer's bob and weave.

and here's the kicker of this whole shebang:
You're in debt and completely fooled
that you can look into the mirror
and objectively rank your wounds
Sewing circles are not solely based in trades of cloth:
There are spinsters all around here taking notes, reporting on us as

Information travels faster in the modern age
in the modern age,
as our days are crawling by so slowly.
Information travels
faster in the modern age
in the modern age,
as our days are crawling by so slowly.

I'm in Los Angeles today: it smells like an airport runway,
Jet fuel stenches in the cabin and lights flickering at random.
I'm in Los Angeles today: garbage cans comprise the medians
The freeways always creeping, even when the population's sleeping.

And I can see why you'd want to live here.

I'm in Los Angles today: asked a gas station employee
if he ever had trouble breathing
he said, "It varies from season to season, kid."

It's where our best are on display,
Motion picture actor's houses maps are never ever current,
so save your film and fifteen dollars.

And I can see why you'd want to live here.

Billboards reach past the tallest buildings
We are not perfect, but we sure try
As UV rays degenerate our youth with time.

The vessel keeps pumping us through this entropic place
In the belly of the beast that is Californ-i-a
I drank from a faucet and I kept my receipts
For when they weigh me on the way out:
Here nothing is free.

The Greyhounds keep coming dumping locusts into the streets
until the gutters overflow and Los Angeles thinks,
"I might explode someday soon."

It's a lovely summer's day and I can almost see the skyline
through a thickening shroud of egos.
(Is this the city of angels or demons?)
Here the names are what remain:
Stars encapsulate the gold lane
and they need constant cleaning
for when the tourists begin salivating,

You can't swim in a town this shallow
You will most assuredly drown tomorrow.

I don't mind the weather, I've got scarves and caps and sweaters,
I've got long johns under slacks for blustery days.

I think that it's brainless to assume that making changes to your
window's view will give a new perspective.

The hardest part is yet to come.

I don't mind restrictions, or if you're blacking out the friction.
It's just an escape (it's overrated, anyways).

The hardest part is yet to come.
When you will cross the country alone.

I put on my overcoat
And walked into winter
My teeth chattered rhythms
And they were grouped in twos or threes
Like a Morse code message was sent from me to me
And cars on slippery slopes were stuck
People pushing through their mittens
As I was beginning
To feel it soaking through my shoes
Getting colder with every step
I took to your apartment, dear

And I was a kaleidoscope
The snow on my lenses distorting the image
Of what was only one of you
And I didn't know which one to address
As all your lips moved

And this is when I forget to breathe
And all the things I scripted
They sound unfounded
And it's the look that your giving me
That tells me exactly what you are thinking:
"This ain't working anymore"

They got their mothers worked in to a panic
Sledding down hills into oncoming traffic
And parents layered clothes until the children couldn't move
and then left them outside until their noses were blue
and I got left there, too

I put on my overcoat
And walked into winter
My teeth chattered rhythms
And they were grouped in twos or threes
Like a Morse code message was sent from me to me

There's a saltwater film on the jar of your ashes
I threw them to sea, but a gust blew them backwards
and the sting in my eyes that you then inflicted was
par for the course just as when you were living

It's no stretch to say you were not quite a father,
but a donor of seeds to a poor single mother that would
raise us alone. We never saw the money that went down
your throat through the hole in your belly.

13 years old in the suburbs of Denver, standing in line
for Thanksgiving dinner at the Catholic church the servers
wore crosses to shield from the sufferance plaguing the others
Styrofoam plates cafeteria tables, charity reeks of cheap wine
and pity, and I'm thinking of you I do every year when we count all our
blessings and I wonder what we're doing here.

You're a disgrace to the concept of family the priest won't
divulge the fact in his homily and I'll stand up and scream if
the mourning remain quiet, you can deck out lie in a suit but I won't buy it
I won't join in the procession that's speaking their
peace using five dollar words while praising his integrity,
just cause he's gone doesn't change the fact:
he was a bastard in life, thus a bastard in death.

Sitting on a carousel ride
without any music or lights
Everything was closed at Coney Island
and I couldn't help from smiling
I can hear the Atlantic echo back
rollercoaster screams from summers past.
Everything was closed at Coney Island
and I couldn't help from smiling
Brooklyn will fill the beach eventually
and everyone will go except me.

The workadays were propping the bar quietly erasing the week and
I was in the corner booth thinking (pretending to read)
About the possibility of one to love unconditionally and the words that
drive into the ground their repetition starts to thin their meaning.

Then everything got frighteningly still as they entered and intersected the
floor and I tried to choke my stare at the perfection that others would kill for.
But all of the parts are the same on every face (few variables change)

The differences pale when compared to the similarities they share.
Finally there is clarity and there is purpose after all, but every night
ends the same as I'm collapsing once more by your side.
Finally there is clarity: This tiny life is making sense,
and every drop numbs the both of us, but I alone am staggering.

we'll correct collegiate mistakes.
a shower of formal ideals.
completely soused.
the hearts on our sleeves,
as they drowned we could hear them screaming,
"oh, what a tragic way to see our final days."

I attempt to talk up the town:
"the answers are in the arches of the 20th century towers
and in comfortable cars in motion."
and yet it still remains, this incessent refrain:
"you're just like the rest. your restlessness makes you lazy."

keeping busy is just wasting time
and i've wasted what little he gave me.
(all around) i know the conscious choice was crystal clear,
to clear the slate of former years:
when i sang softly in your ear and tied these arms around you.

you'll be given love
you'll be taken care of
you'll be given love
you have to trust it
maybe not from the sources
you have poured yours
maybe not from the direction
you are staring at
twist your head around
it's all around you
all is full of love
all around you
all is full of love
you just ain't receiving
all is full of love
your phone is off the hook
all is full of love
your doors are all shut
all is full of love

in any language ( icelandic part)

all is full of love......

Time for the final bout. Rows of deserted houses: all our stable mates are highway bound.
Give us our measly sum: getting the air inside my lungs is heavenly.

We're starting out with nothing but crippling doubt.
We'll rest easy (justified)

I've suffered a swift defeat. I'll endure countless repeats.
The gift of memory is an awful curse,
with age it just gets much worse.

But I won't mind.