Thursday Album

Ambulance, let me in
Don't make me stay here
Ambulance, hold your breath
We're running short on air
Ambulance, resuscitate

At the edge
You see clearly
I was dead
Now I'm back to life
And love is a fragile thing
We all stand on a bridge
That's been slowly burning down

Ambulance, take me back
To the house I was born in
Ambulance, finish it
Don't wake me up again
Ambulance, resuscitate

At the edge
You see clearly
I was dead
Now I'm back to life
And love is a fragile thing
We all stand on a bridge
That's been slowly burning

Breathe in, breathe out
Resuscitate
We can't go on hearing this
Are we clear
Send a car, take him back
Clear
Just one more time
Breathe in, breathe in
While there's still time

We could be the heartbeat
Of everything nine tenths collapsed
Come back to life
We could be the breath of air
Just get to the lungs of the dying
Can you feel a pulse
It's been stopped for so long
Can you start it
Can you feel a pulse
It's been stopped for so long
Let's restart it
With a gentle hand
With a thousand voices
With a single word

When alone
You see clearly
I would know
Now I want to live and love
All these fragile things
We all stand on a bridge
That's been slowly burning down

This is the last call
They'll ever hear me send
Last call for a better life
Wedding bells and cheap champagne
Last call for a Friday night
In bathroom stalls and crowded bars
Last call right before your eyes
We celebrate our severed lives
Last call, where are your friends
They speak the sin, the sin of silence now

Everything we build, it falls apart
And the architect abandons us

Last call when I held you tight
The DJ played cuts from the night
Last call where we used to meet
Know we looked away, and we still repeat
Circular breathing
We'll separate these feelings
Heart attack, efficiency
Erase the figure as it falls

Everything we build, it falls apart
And the architect abandons us

The wedding starts, the guests step in
The church bells ringing endlessly
The bride and groom are hand in hand
And everything goes as it's planned
Parents smile, the priest chokes up
Organ plays Amazing Grace
And underneath the thin white veil
You can hear them say
Last call for the matching hearts
Last call for the yellow birds
Last call for the two of us
And the people sang

Everything is falling apart
Everything is falling apart
Everything is falling apart
Everything is falling apart
Everything is falling apart
Everything is falling apart
Everything is falling apart
Everything is falling apart

I've watched him walk away
to climbed the endless shallow side.
I've watched him holding on.
it was a thousand years, a thousand dreams,
a thousand endings with no goodbye.
He disappeared from me
as he climbed the highest peak of the dark mountain.

Let the mountain sleep in the past with all our bad dreams.

Was it a metaphor
for all the subtle ways that we'd grown apart?
Was it mortality
climbing him high right up the edge of his life?
Into the hands of a loving god,
or the raging void where we get torn apart?
With his hands in the air,
was it laughing or dancing
or only just trying to wave goodbye?
Did he said a prayer for me
as he climbed the highest peak of the dark mountain.

Let the mountain fall.
Strike me down until I can't go on.
Right now, let me fall down
under the ground.

Do we go on alone?
It felt like a thousand years.
It was a thousand miles away

There's a purple heart on the stars and stripes tonight
It's pinned to the chest of the latest liar
And if you try to speak your mind
They tell you keep it to yourself
You got friends in the armed forces
They wanna know which side you're on
Doesn't matter cause we'll all be off

To train, to fight
Disregard our human rights
To play the part
The consciense of the damned
You say you're defending me
I'm sick of tying yellow ribbons
Praying not to see

Another folded flag to a mourning lover
He was an army of one but they'll find another
And in the fold of the body bag
Somebody check for a heart
You got friends in the armed forces
Now we know what a soldier costs
It's the cost of the rest of us

To take a life
We all have our price
The wife and kids sleep soundly in their beds
You say you're defending me
I'm untying yellow ribbons
On every single tree I see

They'll float like butterflies back home
And I can feel the desert's heat
When you're standing next to me
Friendship offers no relief
Stay with me now, just hear me out
Don't want to lose you to that great black cloud
Coming down
You see in the path a bullet makes
When it calls you by your name
And the medic can't play the rythym of your heart
So it starts to fade like footsteps in the march
The parade passes by our fingertips
As lives once were right

To change our minds
Everything that's wrong looks right
The lives we lead
Are somewhere in between

You say you're defending me
I'm sick of tying yellow ribbons
Praying not to see
We're not going to hell
To run rings around a wishing well

When I first saw you, there were gods in the river
Black birds were warning
Circling high above the marquee where
Bold are the lovers
Messed with the holiness others
Turned our breath into snowflakes
Whispered the night wish

We try to find the life at rainbow's end
It finds the end of us instead
Everyone we love

When I come back now
There are etched, shattered diamonds in the skyline
You can't afford to look up at them all
Catch your reflection in someone else's mirror
Your voice in the music
You're drowning in a silent prayer

So if I dive over the railing
Will I float up on all the shining waves of light

We try to find the life at rainbow's end
It finds the end of us instead
Everyone we love's around
Everyone we love's around
Everywhere, we see
Come on

Everyone we love
Everyone we love
Everyone we love
Everyone we love
Everyone you love surrounds you
Everyone you love surrounds you
Everyone you love surrounds you
Everyone you love
Everyone you love surrounds
Everyone you love surrounds
Everyone you love surrounds

The rain falls up and off the street
The clocks turn back in retreat
Footsteps fall off of our feet
I see the tears crawling off your cheeks
Turn back to pink
The slap got pulled right off of it
We all fall back into bed again

When you see what you've done
You want to take back
To take it back
You can't, you can't
And it's killing you

Doctor comes off the street
Stitch gets pulled out audibly
Mothers fall down in their seat
I can see time's arrow turning back to me
Children getting light
Disappear into a sign
We'll all rise like snowflakes in the sky tonight

Paper crane and a dirty train
Trying to drive you away
The arrows fit between our lips
In the final stage
Chemicals dissolve and the family disappears
See the lapse in between the cracks in the atomic age
Like a shot in the vein
Like a shot in the vein

Can a pilot see the distant arc of history
I saw these lies all burst at once into blinding rays
We need a truck
We need something to take the dreams away
The dream of peace is called to sleep in the passing pain
Like a shot in the vein
Like s shot in the vein

There's a laptop hanging by a string
In the flutter of a thousand paper wings
Put your faith in the chemicals
But you fear to crash and you overreact
When you hear the bomb going off
And you see the flash, it's out of sync
When you take bitter pills
No sugarcoat can match the taste
A thousand paper cranes
Let down in the rain
A thousand paper cranes

You are my blanked out pages
All the wasted spaces
The old weapons vanished
Spit blood at dawn, closed forever
You're an ivory icon
Held in glass, captive
You're a falling column
Sharp little teeth kiss goodnight
He was upside down and drifting in an
Endless ocean of night
The terror came in waves, each one
Pushing him further from the shore
You are a fractured mirror
Silver paper in the wind
A desperate measure
Sharp little circuits of fever
I can feel the unslept hours
See all the traces
I can hear the ticking of clocks
Old record running down
You can't replace it
You get distracted by the sound
He hears an ocean in the dial tone
Every night, after the sleeping pill goes down
He wants to believe that he doesn't exist
He's everywhere and he's nowhere all at once

We'll fill the blanked out page
We'll burn the traces
We'll turn the unslept hours to days
Old record running down
We'll flip it over and sing the songs
We've never heard
Now
Now
Now
Now

Surprise, surprise
Everything you know will flash before your eyes
You're frozen with your hands against the glass
I'm seeing bright lights
I'm hearing sharpened knives
I'm praying to a neon sign
As I wait for this severed line to take me
Nobody called

Surprise, surprise
When a sparrow falls, we go about our lives
We're busy counting grains of sand
I follow red birds
I follow lost words
I'll follow you into the dark
We're running for the dead

All the time I wait to see your face
That's what it all comes down to at 42nd and 5th
All the time I wait to hear your voice
That's what it all comes down to
At Grand Central Station

All the time I wait to see your face
That's what it all comes down to at 46th and Flint
All the time I wait to hear your voice
That's what it all comes down to
At Willis Point and Shea

Every passing second
I feel it slip away
All of this we used to watch and play
(All of these things we've been)
All around it's clear that I've been changed
(All these things won't change)
This will never end

But every time I think I see a train
It just closed a door
And the subway funeral is underway
Movie starts to play
Watch the thunder of his scream
For a single frame where I know we're still alive
But it fades to the grave
The subway funeral is everywhere

Every night I see your face on a passing train
Every inch of track is a sacred path that I follow
I follow
It's a silver thread hanging from the hem of heaven
And you're tied to other end
A needle that's been buried in the hay
But I'll find you, I'll find you

Every night I take a ride
On a subway funeral that never ends
Never gone to say goodbye
And that's the subway funeral that's in my heart

They sold the old house
Boarded up the rooms just the way you wanted
They sold your possessions
Gave them all away with the guns
You sing like the wind in the trees at night
You think I'm asleep but I'm awake for it
You think you can hide so easily
That noone ever hears you

And I say love has led us astray
Love won't let us sleep

First we're cut from the cloth in perfect shapes
Then we're tied in a knot and we're left to fray
Can you even see what you're doin to me
You sleep in the leaves and I can't wake you up
You float like a reed in the river bank
If I dive too deep I can't hear you
But everyone else does

And love has led us astray
Love won't let us sleep
And love has led us astray
Love won't let us sleep

And love has led us astray
Love won't let us sleep
And love has led us astray
Love won't let us sleep

Astray, astray, astray
Astray, astray, astray
First we're cut from the cloth in perfect shapes
Then we're tied in a knot and we're left to fray
Love has led us astray

It's the sigh of a building falling down
It's the world spinning us around
It's the slip of the surgeon's knife
Darker crimes of common existence
It's a missile sleeping in the ground
It's a camera trying to photograph a sound
It's a case for the basic flaw
Ending a film in the coming attractions
It's a sound that's spinning out of control
It's a light at the edge of a black hole
Scream of an orchestra
Total collapse of an overreaction

In your blood there is a sad, sad song
Bleeding through your nervous system
It's killing you but it's bringing me along
You were the cancer in my life
You were the cancer all the time
You were the cancer
That's all you'll ever be

It's comfort in a bathtub full of ice
It's the promise of a peaceful afterlife
Or the string of a violin wound too tight
It's gasping for oxygen
It's the signal that's sent out over the air
At the speed of a thousand unheard prayers
Faith in the chemicals
A shot in the dark the size of a particle
It's blood from the neon sign
Shine a light away from your insides
Make a map of the balance
Watching life slip through your hands
They're not for shaking
They're not for praying
They're just for holding close
Everything you love that is fragile in a dream

See, you're coming down
No one knows where
See, you're coming down
Without a prayer

You were the cancer in my life
You were the cancer all the time
You were the cancer
That's all you'll ever be

Your blood is a sad, sad song
Bleeding through your nervous system
It's killing you but it's bringing me along

It's a sound that's spinning out of control
It's a light at the edge of a black hole
Scream of an orchestra
Total collapse of an overreaction

You were the cancer in my life
You were the cancer all the time
You were the cancer
That's all you'll ever be
You were the cancer in my life
You were the cancer all the time
You were the cancer
That's all you'll ever be