The Mountain Goats Album

I will rise from the swamp where they dumped my private plane
I'll be clutching the life preserver in my teeth
And I will find the highway
And I will flag down a truck
Worry lines on my forehead, blank stare underneath

And when I come back to town
I'm gonna cast my burden down
A little worse for wear
Practically walking on air

I will thank my ride and crawl my way back inside
To the guts of the building where my enemies
Hide in the dark like roaches
And I will signal the camera crew and everyone will do
What he's been trained how to do
Sweat dripping from my face as my moment approaches

Click your heels, count to three
I bet you never expected me
A little worse for wear
Practically walking on air

I got off work just past eleven
Laid one finger to the breeze
You can almost taste the action
On nights like these
Trees were bending in the wind
You were forty miles away
And I was headed in your direction
I've been waiting all day, I've been waiting all day

Moon over west covena was huge and white
And I was like a patient on a table
Headed for the light
Lean toward the center divider
Feel the wind in my hair
Keep a light up in your window
I'm gonna be right there, I'm gonna be right there

With a gleam in my eye
And an almost airtight alibi

Down by the chemistry building
I found a quiet place to park
And I made my way down the street toward your place
Stepping lightly in the dark
Climbed the steps up to your doorway
Like a man prepared to jump underneath a train
It's real warm outside tonight
Maybe tommorow it rains, maybe tommorow it rains

Inside your room we shut the window
And we turned on a fan
And we lay there together in the darkness
I can keep a secret if you can
Finishing one another's sentences
Like a pair of identical twins
Your boyfriend's out of town until tuesday
And nobody saw me come in, nobody saw me come in

With a gleam in my eye
And an almost airtight alibi

But meanwhile downstairs, I'm setting up shop
A little too proud to let the matter drop
And I can hear you up there
Isn't it romantic?
You're huffing and puffing rearranging
Deck chairs on the titanic
And I reach for a glass of cool water drawn
From the rivers of babylon

And meanwhile outside, the stars have come out
And the humid summer air pulls at the ring in my snout
And you stand at your window looking down
And I spread wide my arms
Jump if you want to jump, jump if you want to
The water's warm

I know
I know 'cause I've been swimming
Blindly along through the rivers of babylon

This is just to say hello
And to let you know I think of you from time to time

I know I never really knew you, but somehow I miss you
And wish that you'd stayed in my life

Making contact gets harder as the silence grows longer
And isn't it only me

Who'd like us to see each other?
How I would hate to be a bother
The way we left it was you'd ring

I'm under no illusion
As to what I meant to you
But you made an impression
And sometimes I still feel the bruise
Sometimes I still feel the bruise

Now and then I stumble on
What I've misplaced but never lost
An ache I first felt long ago

Though you've appeared and disappeared
Throughout these past few years
I'd be surprised if you now showed

Making contact gets harder as the silence grows longer
And why would you think of me
When you were not the one in love
When you were not the dreamer
When you were just the dream?

I'm under no illusion as to what I meant to you
But you made an impression, and sometimes I still feel the bruise
Sometimes I still feel the bruise

When it came time to wait for you
I took the bus to malibu
Found a cafe by the ocean
Watched the sky for signs

And a rainbow in the west
Wrapped its coils around the earth like a serpent
I felt like I was going to suffocate

But I knew this was not the day you would finally come my way
But I waited all the same
Watched the water through the window

And a rainbow in the west
Held its head beneath the waves and grew dimmer
Nothing anyone could do I suppose