Thumb through
your old songbook
Open up
your royalty cheques
Since your last audit
Now the government's got it

If you're lucky
If you're normal
You look horrible
You sound terrible

This kitchen
you read your mail in
and science digests
Maybe a reunion?
Adapt or die I guess

In outer space
you can freeze to death
at the same time
as your blood boils

The only time
you see the stars
is when you tip
back the glass
the last cigarette
of the night

But what are stars anyway?
Some great analogy
or metaphor?

To explain
the sacred and profane
the simple and the idiotic
and how they make each other possible

You get blindsided by money
to repay the people who were nice
enough to pay you to do this
Money's just another measure of success

If you're lucky
If you're normal
You look horrible
Here's a parable

A man gets an apple
He puts it on a cutting board
Then he takes an axe
and cuts it into fours

The cutting board is fine
but he chops off his
fingertips
He scoops them into his hand
and holds them to the light and
he starts screaming and crying
and he doesn't quite know why

Do you like dreams?
That you can touch?
You know what's in dreams
are more than they seem
You don't care for it

Police cars
sharking through the heat
A garbage bag
waving down the street
Walk over
the sidewalk cracks
stuffed with earwax

When she
was younger
her parents
were actors
and they'd pawn her off

And when her
dilettantish parents
were around
they'd lay it on
pretty thick

But sleeping in
a hospital bed
is depressing
but what's the alternative?
A plastic sheet is
better than none at all
But all the people in the ward
were like dolls

that she used to have
button-eyes, thread mouths,
plaster saints
He said, he's got
nothing to say anymore
Then he talked for an hour more

"TV is totally valueless
it's like a machine for malaise."
"When the spark has gone,
will you stick around?
Only fruit flies
mate for life"

But living
with insane people
then going to live
with sane people
would have seemed
doubly insane

but her paranoia
is making me paranoid

And now it's quite plain

Everything that you did
Around every corner you turned
Every detour
Every sign you followed
Every straw

Minute by minute...
point by point
Bit by bit...
Word by word

All your life...
Every step...

Brought you closer
to death

Why so sorry, morning glory?
There's no tomorrow

Why so sorry, morning glory?
There's no tomorrow

etc.



And every