Kevin Devine Album

[No lyrics]

you drag your tigers paw across
your chapped & cracking lips
and open up a crimson slur
you spread each time you kiss

and the broken boy you bargin with
to turn back to the man
that you fell in love with once
but never saw again
is he in there?
do you think he drowned to death?
well it's his decision to show his face again

You grind your tired teeth
& curse the day that you were born
to a sunken line of irish wives a million miles long
devoted to the suffering they're certain they deserve
a husband, a cross to bare,
worry lines & a silver string of hair
come too early, come to steal your sainted youth.
but it's your decision to stay or else to move

& i'm not a man of faith, no gospel oak for me
but you wear a crucifix to broadcast your beliefs
and the god i've read about can't go where he's not asked to go

so you've got a choice to make
Shut him out, save yourself or sit and wait.
but you're waiting on a man who will not move.
so you must move for him and do what he can't do

Cause it's worth it, it's the one life you can't change
and i'm sorry sister but it has to end this way
Yeah, it's scary sister, tomorrow's just too late.

so stand up sister,
there's an albatrose to shake.

Your husband,
He drinks like a writer,
But he writes like a banker,
I hope his pens all run dry.

You watch him from your cave in the corner,
Full moon eyes flame and flicker,
The wild way that I like.

From my part,
I pretend I don't notice
Dumb friend you're a poet,
And I could do this all night.

And I'll stay like that,
Hands locked in my lap,
What I want jailed up in my mind,
Until I slide to sleep
Where you're waitin' for me,
And we do what we want to,
And shut ourselves off for the night.

Til morning barrels in like a brides maid,
Drunk and desperate for her day,
Drags me out, picks a fight.

And I see I'm alone here
Picture frames and a hot plate
Stubborn sun spites the hallways
Paint chips blink yellow white.

And I'm stretching, in the act of forgetting,
Bear teeth and blood letting,
Signals crossed half my life.

And the local grown
Sees your notes towards my home,
Dreaming fits as we crawl underground,
And you're shedding skin,
So I keep what I can.
Yeah I fill up my pockets,
And stuff all that's left in my mouth.

Now you are a part of me,
For as long as I sleep.
I could trick myself into a trance,
Where were as firm as facts,
And I don't give you back
Every morning the sun comes to shuttle you back to your man.

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

It's a brushfire spreading, feeding as it moves
It's a disappeared glacier, it's an airborne flu
It's your disbelieving eyes locked in concrete miles
It's your yawning conscious and your lawyer's smile
It's an occupied country, foaming at the mouth
No smoking gun, no mushroom cloud
It's a military mother with a boy in hell
And it's a flag draped casket down an oil well
It's an Argentina school girl, gagged and bound
It's a torture camp, it's a long way down
It's the constant brace and shock of now
It's the whole damn world turned inside out, all right

It's a march to extinction with your god in step
It's his name in your mouth, it's his cross on your neck
It's a farm boy sprinting over desert dirt
And he's panting the 'Our Father' in staccato spurts
Now that's his automatic rifle and it tells no lies
That's his truth in your stomach, it's no alibi
But the trouble lies on the other side

With an equal truth prepping for his holy night
He sees his crescent and the star in the virgin sky
He hears the call of milk and honey from the afterlife
And as he eases to the check point, he is calm and sure
It's collateral damage, it's the cost of war

It's another bag of bones for the gods to sort
It's just another bag of bones for the gods to sort

It's the species disappearing, all the birds fly south
In a January heat wave and a pulsing crowd
It's an African militia, kids with sub machines
It's a conflict diamond on your bride to be
It's the dispossessed lining up every gate
It's the facts worth facing, faced way too late
It's the mission of modernity, go get what's yours'
'Til there's nothing leftover to get no more
And it's not what were owed but it's what we've earned
And it's closer than we realized that it's time now, to burn

It's time now to burn
Oh, it's time now to burn

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.

The bricks get laid,
and they get torn up,
and laid again,
but the bricks always get torn up again.

Your friends won't wait,
so don't believe that shit,
when they say they'll wait.
Trust me; your friends will not wait for you.
Then you'll be stoned in some park,
just nodding your head and pinching your arms,
when a girl walks along.
She's humming your song,
with your t-shirt on.
That's when you're done,
Oh, that's when you're done...

There's a cotton crush
down in the southern states.
But back up here, man, we've got
so much thread and space
to waste, waste, waste.

There's a microphone
picking every word up
and it shuts itself off
when it's sure that's its heard enough.....

The quiet can scrape
all the calm from your bones,
but maybe it should.
Maybe we need to be hollowed
to get up and grow,
and stop fucking around,
to kick off our braces and start straightening out.
Let's sift through the static
to find a simpler sound
Let's sift through the static
to find a simpler sound...
simpler sound than the shit that's clouding our heads now

One, two, three, four, one

I could be with anyone
Just while the honeymoon burns bright
No electricity that keeps things light
I'm not saying that it's right
I'm not saying that it's always right
I'm just saying that it's not a lie.

'Cause I can talk to anyone
Care just enough about our wounded pride
A ballerina dreams a lead foot life
A sugar daddy and his clueless wife
And I know that it's not right
I just don't always know how or why

So I can stick to anyone
At least for a little while
A caffeinated stream of cartoon smiles
And conversations sharp and deep
A tempting sample of who I could be
Without the broken glasses waiting underneath

So I'd walk soft if I were you
You could cut up your feet
For now it's just what I am
But it's not what I'll be, oh hopefully.

See I'm in love with everyone
Every sweetheart on the scene
Each set of cheekbones that'll flare past me
I'm not saying that it's right
And I'm not saying it's a life
I'm just saying it's where I'm at tonight.

And I could be with anyone...

I'm waiting for the train
Subway that only goes one way
The stupid thing that'll come to pull us apart
And make everybody late

You spent everything you had
Wanted everything to stop that bad
Now I'm a crashed credit card registered to Smith -
Not the name that you called me with

You turned white like a saint
I'm tired of dancing on a pot of gold-flaked paint
Oh we're so very precious, you and I
And everything that you do makes me want to die
Oh I just told the biggest lie
I just told the biggest lie
The biggest lie

In a motel room, with the Bible out
Combing scriptures for answers about
What's happening now

'Cause I cant believe my eyes
And I just don't trust my ears
But I've heard a man can always come find
Some solace here

And Lord, I know that we dont talk
Often at all anymore
But desperate folks do desperate things
So I'm stapling this note to your door

Please, turn the ship around
And lock the course in place
And keep the train tracks nailed to the ground
Or pull the emergency break

'Cause I've lost my faith in man
Just like I once lost faith in you
And I've been covering all kinds of ground
Thinking hard 'bout what else i could lose

And I know how I look
To come crawling back
Acting like you owe me proof
But this is bigger than me
I think it's bigger than you too

So if this gets to you
Yeah if you ever come home
Just know I won't be awaiting the postman
I will not be glued to my phone
I'll know a change has come
I'll know that you exist

When all our bombs stop exploding
And when all of those landmines are stripped
And we stop blowin' up strangers' houses
And making orphans of innocent kids
And people stop thinking the world's theirs for the taking
'Cause your world once told them it is

'Til then, i'm gonna shake my head
I'm gonne bite my tongue
When people tell me, 'Have faith and be patient,
We're waiting for God to show up.'

Yeah 'til then, it's one more skeptical song
And i'll be glad as hell
If you come and prove me wrong