Hook your mouth around peace
Let silence tear your teeth
Lose and find yourself in the ersatz classic
Write another symphony of plastic

I told myself to sing along to the molten brass victory song
I told myself to make it right
Sometimes I believe I might

I told myself to write the symphony of plastic
A jaw harp or a torn elastic
When a trumpet is too drastic
Amadeus would be proud

As the sun rose and fell, he reckoned
From now nature bends and breaks as you beckon
I’m looking across this endless river just to get a fleeting glimpse of the time
When if you wanted to, you could be, if you tried
But now try to hear the sounds of the night, they sing for you

I watched the sun breathe his first breath
His mouth, it filled with smoke
When he trusted you with his light
Did he perform his famous practical joke for you

Feign what you must to be spoken and sung
The wind told the sun she was speechless
He just said, keep to your own native tongue

Still she made a wish for you
But a wish couldn’t get you that far

Let me know what you learn from old eyes and birdshot between ones that cry
Between beaks that tear at your feeder and the window of your theater

There was never nothing to fear
The sky has never been so clear for you
Marigolds hung from the clouds in your garden and I wanted to ask for something

So I made a wish for you
But a wish only gets you so far
A wish only tells you where you are
Stop and listen to the words of the stars
They are talking to you
But do not ask so much of them

I’m breaking a musical saw trying to split a log
I’m walking the street looking restless men in the eye
I’m taking a long, long time trying to sing through the spiritual
This is my silent protest, this is my miracle

This is how I will learn to speak
Through tearing out wisdom teeth

Between the lights on the Christmas tree
Strike at every spider web that your eight eyes see
There is a one-winged insect so safe and free
Illuminated from light bursting through the shade
Through the drunken man’s stumbling grace

This is how they will learn to walk
Through the watercolor stains on the artist’s smock

Stuffed in the mouth with a thousand thorns
They called him Savior, as he stepped
He was stepping skin over bone
Climbing every mountain with these little gold shoes
Pictured in the most phantasmal children’s books read again in a decade or so

He will climb just high enough
This is how you will find where the light comes from
This is how I will learn to love enough to greet every fallen star with a life complete
And every deadbeat in the passenger seat
Who wants to watch the world go by
Go by

How I longed to see that industrial light
And all the ladies in red
I wanted to go to to the carnival
And I wound up in Heaven instead

The politics are killing me
And that, I cannot explain
Just like a hingeless door
Locked and inscribed so profane

Onetwothreefouronetwothreefouronetwothreefouronetwothreecomeon

Well there aren’t many words that mean anything
When you hear Mr. Ripley knocking at your door
I wanted to go to the carnival
So I went and I was bored

I was singing a song as loud as I could
And I was shushed and simmered out
A bird flew by and sang a swan song to its glassy lover
And the Garden of Eden is where he was found

I didn’t hear one sweet sound
Except for

Glory, glory, hallelujah
Glory, glory, Hallelujah
Glory, glory, hallelujah
But his soul keeps marching on

What a friend we have in confusion’s impermanent face
Enamored with his way of poison grace
Take this beauty from seas of oil once blue
Move the skies in a pas de deux

Oh my gosh! See the worlds colliding!

Shut your eyes now before you see all the pretty soldiers take a knee
The Earth’s heartstrings have seemed to break
She cries, rid me from the beauty, spare me the pain
You know it’s only love or the lack thereof to blame

Oh my gosh! See the worlds colliding!
Oh my gosh! See the worlds colliding!

Some chanteuse taught the silent birds to sing so free
The trees, a burning stake, but you are nature’s reprieve
It lies intoxicated so you carry the world
You are Atlas as a girl

But don’t hold me how Atlas holds the world
Holds the world

You are Atlas

Rocking like a cradle back and forth
Drowning in the rain
Moonlight touched her as if she was made of glass and he saw her through the same

Crying out like a bell in a quiet day
Eyes shut at the sound
The sky strikes to no hearing ears
And the sun was crowned

Rocking like a cradle back and forth
Drying in the flame
Sunlight touched her as if she was made of glass and he saw her through the same
Through a memory torn and maimed

That’s the church organ breathing out
This voice is not your own
You were born with yesterday’s heart
Make your tired bones sturdy and make your bright vision dark

The fingers of the rain are clawing two by two
The fingers of the rain are clawing their way to you
How the berry bleeds into the stainless fork

Sing more for me
Croak as your old body burns
Clearly love has no eyes

There’s an angel massaging your back
Fourteen sirens sing you to sleep
You lie in blurry places and spit in ugly faces
The stars blessed their light upon thee

Bomb the bridge
Bomb all you’ll never find
Let’s spend all our days angering the divine
Let’s make every mindless road glimmer and glow on
There’s love in the Pentagon

Watch the suspension snap
Twist rightfully
Now test gravity
Distort light for thee
Offer the Earth its peace

How can I cross it again
How can I cross it again
How can I cross it agaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain

Silver is the hand that feeds your family
Dead is the tree that knocks at your door
There are no leaves, no fruit, no water in the root
The root who knows what waiting is really, really good for

Rusted is the arm that builds your wooden barn how the vaccine needle knits a blanket of song
Like a chloroform kiss
Like a child’s fist
All things must work on the Lord’s farm

He who spends his days laying down barbed wire
Tell me, what’s in the eyes of a very rich man of 85 with his hands caught in the briars?

My name is Asphalt
I hear many things
That’s how I know many things

Hear the couple thousand barbarians who all claim to be Odoacer
Meet a million ants all dying to be anything greater
Like the eye of a fading hurricane
All will live to wet this stalwart stain

Rotten is the fruit in your plastic bowl
They won’t rot any slower straddled in my stony shawl
Peaceful is the instant when the crimeless cannon is fired
Upon he who has drenched himself in glysophate
He who waits on the beautiful, cruel wire

The world is rumbling in confusion and its hands are caught in the briars

All the saints are crowded outside
Waiting for their paint they watch to dry
Ecstatic, thrilled, how the masterpiece spills
Starstruck by the same stained glass mundane

It hooked me for a second there, too

I had to ask, what are you waiting for
Who lays upon the altar and why
I asked them, was Jesus’s body so wry
One said, I don’t know, we only worship the passage of time

I worshipped for a second there too

I said, time knows its worth
It needs no praise
Is this really how you’d like to spend your days
Then that saint collapsed as he suffered a horrible heart attack
Not a soul turned as he fell on his famous back

That’s how the poor man died that day
The others stood and watched with feet of concrete or clay
Then a murmur erupted
A silent prayer
As the Lord reached out and brushed on another layer

It was never really my business anyways
It was never really my business anyways
No, it was never my business

There are no words to dismiss
There are no other worlds like this
For they see a beauty I cannot!
Just about anything could be!
Just about everything is God!
Yeah, and I know you have never been flawed
Just about everything is God, just ask around!

That is how we will learn to smile
Stumbling grace through every mile

It was never my business

You were born in an air vent
You had never gone outside
You stepped onto my leg as I played guitar
That is how you died

I am so sorry
You were drawn to my song
And I swatted you in panic
I hope you weren’t scared for long

Brothers, I ask of you
Not to end a life for fun
Brains or none, a hundred legs or one
Or you’ll be there when your next life has

Begun