Kevin Devine Album

Brooklyn boy, born and raised in shopping lines
hey hey, it's my birthday
it's a toy I torched, a tarpit flame, a lockjaw night
hey hey, it's my birthday

friends that make your stomach shake
while your hissing head barrels down that blackened lane
alone at last to figure how you got this way
alone at last to figure how you got this way

charcoal clouds spot and spray, they kill the sun
hey hey, hear its back break
so I can never tell night from day
or right from wrong,
hey hey, you're my headache

silver tongue it masks your hungry hate
while your haggard heart whispers through its cracking cage
you still can change, you have to know, you still can change
I know, I know, for now I wanna be this way

this was a choice, this was never a mistake

The sputtering blink of the streetlamp
Makes you taller, then shrinks you, then splits you in half,
So you're trailing yourself on your walk to the payphone-
Your pockets weighted down with quarters and the hope that no-one's home.
You spraypaint cinnamon on vines and key the cars you pass by.
Your ears burn and your voice don't sound right.

So you spend the next week playing weakened,
Rolling three men alone in the dark of your kitchen.
Your apartment can't talk so it's safe for your secrets,
All the stories you've invested with a massochist, menacing meaning,
Those tired tricks that you play to graph the life to your name
And you know it's not yours but for now it's okay.

You wake and cut your initals in cheap glass
To mark a space for yourself when your time here has passed
When you're drifted and done(,) trading danger for distance.
All those rocks that rope your neck are finally nameless and weightless and faceless
And you strip the sting from the stains that bleed the life from your face.
Your cheeks will burn red on a pure perfect day

I found my fickle friend
out in the alley way
He said, You don't look so good.
I said, Hey doc, that's great.
You started practicing?
I never got the note.
So let's shake and trade
and be on our way.
Let's go, go, go.

So here we are again,
inside your neon shrine,
sharing a chopping block
beneath embarassed light
that tries to hide from us
it tucks itself away.
So we both grab hold
and say no you don't.
Just stay, just stay.

And I'm racing towards
the one mistake
that locks me in my place.
The judgement call
that justifies the smirk stuck on my face.
My crooked life scared straight and stiff
by the last wrong turn I'll take.
But I'm not there yet so come purr, my pet.
Let's play, let's play.

The morning's hot and harsh,
my notebook fills itself.
The words come thick with sweat,
it feels like someone else
is writing all of this,
someone I just can't believe.
when I mop my brow,
set my pen back down,
it's still me, still me.

And I'm grabbing at a feeling now
that I can't ever name.
Some sign post to remind me
how I wanted things this way.

And she said, it's pretty
but you hate yourself,
I can hear it clear as day.
And I say, a sin like this,
it sounds worse than it is.
I'm okay, okay.
I'm okay, okay.
Just stay, just stay.

Tonight i'm posed and popping like a peacock. i'm pressing flesh. i'm smiling big. my spinning head sings "stop, just stop." 'cause what used to calm me down just rips my life to ribbons now. so i keep smiling. i find my window and quick cut out. these days my hangman's hunger makes my gut kick. my sleeping mind could map it blind: a flask, a key, a bag, a fifth. i try to will myself away while shouting habits plead their case. so when the sun seers through my eyes, a beggar's brain can't compromise. i splash cold water. i draw the curtains. i stay inside. and i can't say that it's a sickness, more like a stranger i ask in and later realize it was a strangler slipping nooses in my den. but i was lonely, so i asked him, "could you tie that one on me?" it wasn't his fault. i was eager and i was weak.

So as i inched towards resolution, yeah, i'm not sure which life feels right. no narrow noose or the wading water will hang in hex or open eyes. i know my brother, he went one way and at the fork i heard him say, "don't you follow. don't go making my mistakes." and i realized what he meant: don't kill yourself to raise the dead. it never works. you'll only end up joining them. it never works. you'll only end up joining them.

i found you grieving in the grass
the sky bled water colored blue
you seemed so simple sure and sad
so I sat down to grieve with you
you raised your hand to shield your eyes
i shifted left to block the sun
you crossed your legs and cleared your throat
i waited for you words to come
but they slept soundly in your chest
they never made it past your tongue
so we sat silently and still
and thought about the things we'd done
and all the people that we loved
and all the people that we wronged
i watched the years flash through your face
and i locked my anger in my lungs
so every breath stung more and more
a wave of whips across my spine
a billion bees trapped in my chest
nails on chalkboard every time
til i watched your fingers sneak towards mine
i heard your breath go thin and short
i tucked your hair behind your ears
and watched your eyes dart back and forth
i sucked your lip and bit your neck
the trees were shaking at their roots
my angry arms fell cool and calm
and my cotton mouth was well with you
so we lay glowing in the grass
to watch the sun swamp with the moon
to trade our future for our past
the present tense was all we knew

Less yesterday and more today
I gotta get my head on straight
The tree trunks rot and people get caught
Buying bullshit we don't need or want

Well full forests turn to desert's hot dried dirt
The animals dig ditches, they hide and watch our backs get burned

And less yesterday, and more today
Yea I gotta start livin' that way
And less yesterday, and more today
Yea I gotta get my head on straight

The ground shrinks fast and the spot-lit strips of houses
They look like christmas lights she'd hang in her apartment
So I turn my head, I try to watch the screen instead
But my eyes go fuzzy and start painting shapes all over the movie I'm watching
And they mix and match my present with my past
But the colors are crisp and I press to hard so ink soaks straight through the back

And less yesterday, and more today
Yea I gotta start to live, to live that way
So less yesterday, and more today
Yea I gotta get my head on straight

Cause I keep ending up exactly where I start
A roller rink I stumble through waiting for the songs to stop
And I used to drown it out with empty space I found
But I turned my back and my life got too crowded so it's really hard to do that now

And less yesterday, and more today
Yea I gotta start livin that way
And less yesterday, and more today
Yea I gotta get my head on straight

I saw your freckles on the shoulders
Of a stranger today
And my heart leapt, my heart leapt
I saw the sickle of your dimple
Slice the side of her face
And my heart leapt, my heart leapt
But then she faced me while we wrestled
For our place on the train

Kabuki makeup, a labret ring
I kept out of her way
You're not that actress playing dress-up
On the subway today
So my heart keeps leapin' on

I tried to catch you in a couplet
On my 4-track today
But my tongue tied, my tongue tied
I couldn't figure how to fit you
On the spin and the tape
See, my tongue tied, my tongue tied

The words are small and insignificant,
Confused and cliche
I saw my promise and potential
Through my guilt and my shame
I couldn't catch that in a couplet
On my best goddamn day
My tied tongue tumbles on

Shake and shiver
And laugh like cursing kids
And all our fitful failures
Fit everytime we kiss
So cross your fingers, place your bets
And hold that glow in your face
Let my big mouth ramble on

Shake and shiver
And laugh like cursing kids
And all our fitful failures
Fit everytime we kiss
So cross your fingers, place your bets
And hold that girl in your face
Let my big mouth ramble on

The moralist on the mountaintop
The cap gun cowboy caught playing dress up
Patrols his cartoon beat with his costume clothes
The damn fool with his ten-top chip
His bourgeois blues and his heartbreak habit
Slings his lightening bolts, his arrows & stones

Well, you could do it forever
It won't make it better
Cause you won't find your mark
You could use a mirror
To see your target clearer,
All the bad blood that hijacked your heart
But you got what you asked for, so don't even start:
You were never a victim.
So own what you did, son, admit what you are.

Dead weight in a tightrope trance
The pain pill preacher astray in his wasteland
Clenched teeth and a canyon he can't close
But there's me racing right along
The jukebox jester, stuck on the same song
A mouthful of lies, a head full of holes

Until I got worried
And saw the life I could lead
If I backed up off that rope
And let the ground come to me
Steady under my knees
I let my anger burn into hope
I asked for perspective, and it untied my hands
I see the role I played. I chose my own way.
I can't blame you for that.

So when you're sorry
And one day you will be
I wish you all the best
And hope that you drop softly
And it don't end too badly
And your raging head can finally rest
And you can be honest and rescue yourself
But I'll walk my own road. I'll go where you won't go.
You won't put me through hell.
Cause now I see through you. Believe what you need to.
Go haunt someone else.

40 million refugees with no place on this earth to call their home
One for every aimless graduate with nothing else to show for it but loans
And those of us who make a mark using someone else's blood
Our western stain won't wash away, won't vanish in the flood
It's just deeper with each hurricane and tidal wave and war
Oh whoa oh woh
We want everything we see and once it's gone we just want more

Atlas had those shoulders, we've got Am bien and Jamesons and blow
To bind us in a bubble, keep the newsprint nightmare distant and remote
But when we wake in guillotines and pitch our screaming fits
When the Governor strikes up the band and gags our parted lips
When the worst case shows up dressed and dazzling ready for the ball
Oh whoa oh woh
Boy that bubble's bound to burst and what a tragic way to fall

The tabloids tell us hate the rat who strikes those subways closed and puts you out
Forget those 50-hour tunnel weeks inhaling steel dust poison through his mouth
Well if he don't deserve a pension that makes his family feel secure
If we're now so disconnected it's our relfections we ignore
And if our constant choice is skimming past the writing on the wall
Oh whoa oh woh
Then I'm sad to say we're lost and I'm embarrassed for us all

So most days I can't put to rest the burning city smoking in my mind
And I play pretend the principals are nothing more than actors running lines
And I stumble through a movie set where torture victims laugh
At abandoned journalist who juggled knives and daggered glass
While they entertain the marble Heads of State and CEO's
Oh whoa oh woh
I stagger past anarchist extras through saloon doors painted gold

So I turn and I see Uncle Sam, walks out of wardrobe ready for the shoot
So I walk right up and talk to him, I tell him that I'm scared and I'm confused
While they test the cameras out and get the lighting right, while catering fills coffee cups and carves up apple pie
And while the stylists trim his beard and straighten those lapels
Oh whoa oh woh
I ask was it pies that made him drive us straight to hell
and as my daydream ends he stands there shamed, a shocked and shattered shell

But there's never any answer for my starving tongue to tell
Oh whoa oh woh oh oh
Cause the director's shouting action and from off set it's just as well

Me and my friends
We don't encourage discipline
Or really much of anything.
We do our drugs 'till we're lit up.
Tell ourselves that this is love.
But it's never added up
And it will never be enough.

It's the same corner booth,
The same smith street bar,
The same sour mouths,
And the same empty arms.
Forever and ever our lives
On a loop.

It's the same dollar draft,
The same whiskey words,
The same hanging heart,
And the same old scorched earth.
We're further and further
Away from the truth.

I wanna stop it.
I wanna stop it.
I wanna stop it.
But it's the only life i know how to live

We make a mess of what matters
Give our good grace away
We try to drink the clock backwards
And pretend like nothing's changed

But you think i'm a liar, but you think i'm a fake
And i think you're a coward, but it's not what i say
I call you my brother, and you call me the same

I wanna stop it.
I wanna stop it.
I wanna stop it.
But it's the only life i know how to live

Let the smear words spew out of the sides of my mouth
Go be my ghost and i'll got be yours
My brother, pour me one more
Yeah tonight brother pour me one
Yeah tonight i'll just cut you one more
Yeah tonight i'll just cut you one more

Trouble tracks me down,
It's been dragging me around
Since my feet first touched the ground.
And I'm kicking like a kid,
Cause I can't get rid of it.
And it's never going nowhere now.

I duck dodge to my left,
I slide step to my right,
But it nails me everytime.
And I'm finished pulling fits,
Yeah, I've learned to live with it.
Marching steady, straight and by my side.

Trouble makes no scene,
She sweeps in surgical and clean,
Leaves me begging on my hands and knees.
And she's always on the clock,
But she doesn't own a watch
Cause she wrecks me straight into my sleep.

Well drift into a dream
And I'm sailing on some sea,
Shooting whiskey with my Irish bride,
Till Amy Goodman wakes me up.
I'm alone in brooklyn, broke as fuck,
With a splitting headache
And sore bloodshot eyes.

And I've known trouble all my life
And I'm sick of asking why.
It's like screaming at a set of dice.
They're gonna role the way they role
And then you're never gonna know.
So getting crazy's just a waste of time.

I've just seen trouble track me down,
It keeps pulling me around,
Till I'm deep inside the ground.
And then I'll smile in my sleep,
Cause in that box I'm finally free.
And ain't no trouble gonna find me now.
Ain't no trouble gonna find me now.
Ain't no trouble gonna find me now.

A reporter in a jailroom, whispering her source to a dying bulb
While the prince is in a fable, peaceful in his cradle, convinced of the impossible:
All those wicked words I used to build my wild Western truth!
I was just following the rules. Yeah, I did what I had to do.
So now its later than it needs to be
And in the dulcet tones of dream
The prince atop his chariot,
Heaven bound & glory be.

A mother in a market chases after children that she barely knows
While the father on the barstool, dropped off by his carpool, is playing a familiar role:
I used to be a conquering king. I watched the slow stars shoot & swing.
When I'd wake, the world would sing. Now, I can't hear anything.
So now its later than it needs to be
And while his stranger family sleeps
The king looks for his castle,
Heaven bound & glory be.

There's a myth we must've made
One we're spreading every day
In every dying dream we grieve
The humming hole we fight & feed
It's the loving lives we long for
Heaven bound & glory be

A man in a hotel room, tangled to his teeth by the telephone
He's waiting on a woman, wondering what she's doing,
And pacing so his pulse won't slow.
He drums his legs and pulls his hair; he carves her dimples in the air.
The raging world has spooked him scared, and he don't want her lost out there.
So now it's later than it needs to be
And though his aching eyes want sleep
Against all rationality
Against everything he believes
He prays for her protection,
Heaven bound & glory be.
I pray for your protection,
Heaven bound & glory be.