Silver Jews Album

In 1984 I was hospitalized for approaching perfection
Slowly screwing my way across Europe, they had to make a correction
Broken and smoking where the infrared deer plunge in the digital snake
I tell you, they make it so you can't shake hands when they make your hands shake

I know you like to line dance
Everything so democratic and cool
But baby, there's no guidance when random rules

I know that a lot of what I say has been lifted off of men's room walls
Maybe I've crossed the wrong rivers and walked down all the wrong halls
But nothing can change the fact that we used to share a bed
And that's why it scared me so when you turned to me and said

Yeah, you look like someone
Yeah, you like someone who up and left me low
Boy, you look like someone I used to know

I know you like to line dance
Everything so democratic and cool
But baby, there's no guidance when random rules

I asked a painter why the roads are colored black
He said, "Steve, it's because people leave and no highway will bring them back"
So if you don't want me, I promise not to linger
But before I go, I gotta ask you, dear, about the tan line on your ring finger

No one should have two lives
Now you know my middle names are wrong and right
Honey, we've got two lives to give tonight

To give tonight
To give tonight

Are you honest when no one's looking?
Can you summon honey from a telephone?
They sat there with their hooks in the water
And their mustaches caked with airplane glue

Oh, come let us adore them, California overboard
When the sun sets on the ghetto all the broken stuff gets cold
Smith and Jones forever, Smith and Jones forever
Smith and Jones forever together, forever and ever, together forever and ever

Build a stage for autumn's bitch
They walk the alleys in duct tape shoes
They see the things they need through the windows of a hatchback
The alleys are the footnotes of the avenues

Oh, come let us adore them, California overboard
Holding up their trousers with extension cords
Smith and Jones forever, Smith and Jones forever
Smith and Jones forever together, forever and ever, together forever and ever

Got two tickets to a midnight execution
We'll hitchhike our way from Odessa to Houston
And when they turn on the chair something's added to the air
When they turn on the chair something's added to the air

Forever, to the air forever
Smith and Jones forever together
Forever and ever
Together forever and ever and ever

[No lyrics]

They don't walk
They don't talk in Malibu
They don't vote
They don't even smoke, I know you're blue

I know you're blue
I know you're blue

They don't cream
And they don't dream in Kansas City
They don't cry
They don't, they never act, I know you're ready

I know you're ready
I know you're ready

They don't cry
And they don't die in South Dakota, just like a seagull
They don't mash
They don't hatch in South Dakota

In South Dakota
Here comes the coda

Not much water coming over the hill
Not much, not much, not much
Not much water coming over the hill
Not much, not much, not much

Not much water coming over the hill
Not much, not much, not much
Not much water coming over the hill
Not much, not much, not much

Moments can be monuments to you
If your life is interesting and true
It's just the same for a man or a girl
The meaning of the world lies outside the world

People love people and they understand
If you want to renovate your background mind
A federal woman needs a municipal man
People gotta synchronize to animal time

You can't change the feeling but you can change your feeling about the feelings in a second or two
People always come around
I'm studying the ceiling on a little afternoon and when I paint my dining room
People gonna come around

I love to see a rainbow from a garden hose
Lit up like the blood of a centerfold
I love the city and the city rain
Suburban kids with Biblical names

People ask people to watch their scotch
People send people up to the moon
When they return, well, there isn't much
People be careful not to crest too soon

The drums march along at the clip of an IV drip
Like sparks from a muffler dragged down the strip
I really hope you'll come around

It's sunny and 75, it feels so good to be alive,
Come on, baby, don't stay inside
Everybody's coming out tonight

I see you gracefully swimming with the country club women
In the Greenwood southside society pool
I love your amethyst eyes and your protestant thighs
You're a shimmering socialite jewel

From the Carbon Dioxide Riding Academy
To the children's crusade marching through the downtown
Well, I think I'd die, see, if you just said hi to me
When something breaks it makes a beautiful sound

Sometimes I feel like I'm watching the world
And the world isn't watching me back
But when I see you, I'm in it too
The waves come in and the waves go back

And the kids in the corner all covered in dirt
Caught trespassing under the moon
My father came in from wherever he'd been
And kicked my shit all over the room

All over the room
All over the room

The room is dark and heavy with what I want to say
I see murals in the radio static and on your blue blue jeans
What would you say if I asked you to run away?
It's been done so many times I hardly know what it means

I took these blue arrangements and threw them in the sea
When older waves from older caves brought them back to me
I took these blue arrangements and stored them on a shelf
With coins on the mantle and time in a candle, in the end a boy raises himself

Up the hill past 694, at the stone wall make a left
And I will see you soon, my friend
If these old directions still direct, oh yeah
If these old directions still direct

Is the problem that we can't see or is it that the problem is beautiful to me?
Birds of Virginia are flying within you
Like background singers they all come in threes
Like background singers they all come in threes

Won't soul music change now that our souls have turned strange?
Once a day, twice a day
When on and off collide
We'll set our souls aside and walk away

We've been raised on replicas
Of fake and winding roads
And day after day, up on this beautiful stage
We've been playing tambourine for minimum wage

But we are real, real
I know we are real

Repair is the dream of the broken thing
Like a message broadcast on an overpass
All my favorite singers couldn't sing
All my favorite singers couldn't sing

My ski vest has buttons like convenience store mirrors
And they help me see
That everything in this room right now is a part of me, oh yeah
Is a part of me

Won't soul music change now that our souls have turned strange?
Once a day, twice a day
When on and off collide
We'll set our souls aside and walk away

Realizing is how it feels
Inside when it happens to you
So I took a shot of sugar like snow dumped into the blood
And children wander off into the ultra-economic

But we're real
We are real
I know we are real
I know we are real
I know we are real, real, real, real, real

Send in the clouds
Bring down the rain
Shut all the blinds and turn out the lights
I feel insane when you get in my bed

I am the trick
My mother played on the world
Seventeen doctors couldn't decide
Whether I should be allowed in the game

Why can't monsters
Get along with other monsters?
Soi disantra, soi disantra
Soi disantra

I know a puppy
Who walked from Kentucky
Made to East Virginia by dawn
He had seventeen ideas in his head

Windex tears flow down the robot's face
He never felt a mother's embrace
My mama named me after a king
I'm gonna bury my name in you

Why can't monsters
Get along with other monsters?
Soi disantra, soi disantra
Soi disantra

Like like the the the death
Air crickets air crickets air crickets air crickets air

Mother and child with magazine
Into a story, into a dream
Why is there something instead of nothing?
And how is the asking built into the hunting?

Do you believe in MGM endings?
Everybody's coming back to Christmas for Texas
Folks who've watched their mother kill an animal know that their home is surrounded by places to go
And the west has made a deal with the sun

My life at home every day
Drinking coke in a kitchen with a dog who doesn't know his name
Oh, right, it could have been anyone
Grass rabbits grass rabbits grass rabbits grass rabbits grass

Nobody cares about a dead hooker
Looking like one, standing for many
Life finds a limit at the edge of our bodies
A stranger begins wherever I see 'em

Let's live where the indoors and the outdoors meet
All the kids in the commonwealth are free
Every morning you forgive me, every evening you relive me and the thing itself is what you give me
And the morning has cut a deal with the east

Like like the the the death
Air crickets air crickets air crickets air crickets air

Back then I had a Buckingham rabbit
I'd been lonely since she found Christ
Now is the time to depend on the law
The nights of my professional life
It's the nights of my professional life

I was living in a very young city
Grand piano, great lakes goodbye
If you ask me my name, it's high-low-jack in the game
I can track a single bee to the hive

Every single game was a blowout
And the NASCAR blurred into porn
Scenic this, scenic that, don't fall for the traps
Of the man who was never born
The man who was never born

And so the rent became whiskey
And then my life became risky
And so the rent became whiskey, whiskey
Shattered dogs on the rocks

At the back of the bar there's a couch
Where the lonely people go and lie
They talk to the honky tonk psychiatrist
Into the wee hours of the night
Into the wee hours of the night

The factory's on muscle relaxers
The pine perfume of hilltown floors
The lover, the thinker, the talker, the singer
Won't be lucid for her anymore
Won't be lucid for her anymore

And so the rent became whiskey
And then my life became risky
And so the rent became whiskey, whiskey
Shattered dogs on the rocks, shattered dogs on the rocks

When you know how I feel I feel better
When you're fifteen you want to look poor
You do unto others and run like a mother
I don't want to look poor anymore
No, I don't want to look poor anymore

Jesus in a runaway shelter
Said "The deaf have pictures of you"
From the digital fountains to the analog mountains
Let the mirror express the room
Let the mirror express the room

Radio's on, feeling all right
Cruising the strip on a Saturday night
I smile and I wave and I hide all my pain
But the sign on my bumper gives me away

Honk if you're lonely tonight
If you need a friend to get through the night
A toot on your horn, a flash of your brights
Honk if you're lonely tonight

I know a honky tonk where we can go
A booth in the back with the lights way down low
The jukebox is playing a sad melody
For heartbroken lovers just like you and me

We'll laugh and we'll flirt and we'll dance every dance
And before the night's over we'll make romance
The morning will find us with a smile on our face
And we'll be together in a lovers' embrace

Honk if you're lonely tonight
If you need a friend to get through the night
A toot on your horn, a flash of your brights
Honk if you're lonely tonight

I know it seems sad to be so damn blue
But there's always a chance that you'll meet someone new
I know that somewhere waiting for me
Is a sad, lonely lover with a bumper that reads

Honk if you're lonely tonight
If you need a friend to get through the night
A toot on your horn, a flash of your brights
Honk if you're lonely tonight

I wrote a letter to a wildflower
On a classic nitrogen afternoon
Some power that hardly looked like power
Said I'm only perfect in an empty room

Four dogs in the distance
Each stands for a kindness
Bluebirds lodged in an evergreen altar

I'm gonna shine out in the wild silence
I'm gonna shine out in the wild silence
I'm gonna shine out in the wild silence
And spurn the sin of giving in

Oil paintings of x-rated picnics
Behind the walls of medication I'm free
Every leaf in a compact mirror
Hits a target that we can't see

Grass grows in the icebox
The year ends in the next room
It is autumn and my camouflage is dying

Instead of time there will be lateness
Instead of time there will be lateness
Instead of time there will be lateness
And let forever be delayed

I dyed my hair in a motel void
Met the coroner at the Dreamgate Frontier
He took my hand, said "I'll help you, boy
If you really want to disappear"

Four dogs in the distance
Each stands for a kindness
Bluebirds lodged in an evergreen altar

I'm gonna shine out in the wild kindness
I'm gonna shine out in the wild kindness
I'm gonna shine out in the wild kindness
And hold the world to its word