Lyrics

MOTHERS VS. SONS
The men that you adore, were, for a time, just boys,
the kind who took a strange delight
as their baby teeth would tumble from their tongues.

As their mouths were raw and wet,
mother reached for the camera as her boy would smile
for the portrait of that news.

Nobody knows how a mother sighs,
nobody knows a poor mother’s fright
to have to document that little crimson gap-toothed smile.

Nobody knows how a mother hides,
in the picture book of the family pride,
the cupboard dust guards the plastic sheen on the evidence
of what little ghouls those boys became
and the disappointments they would bring.

Nothing feels as empty as the bellies where a son would once have laid,
no food could ever fill that space.
No tears could fit the eyes of one who can no longer take her boy aside.
Mother’s always losing that right.

From cradle to grave, it’s mothers against sons!

BABY NOISE
Young hearts be seen tonight!
Time is on the side of your newfound sense pride.
Don’t listen when you are told you’ll soon grow old,
Because when you do, you’re gonna wish that you were never told.

You’ll want to freeze the frame
in the movie of the life that you spent in the clubs
where extras dance to the singers
who screams three words a time.
With marbles in their mouths,
they sing about the sound of their sound,
and it does not make sense to you now.
The disco ball loses its shine when they turn out the light.

Young hearts be seen tonight….

Some day we all go back
to the days we were babies, making the baby noise.
On our backs on the gurneys
we miss the chattering voices that we heard all those years,
muttering all that air in our ears.
It’s absence brings the bitter tears to your eyes.
There is no life beyond the one we wasted this one time.

In your your disappointment, you will want to be survived
by your desperate rage against the dying of the light.
When you learn the author of those words drank himself blind,
You will want to be so desperately seen tonight.

THE GRIEVING GAME
Barbara, you cannot expire, until to bed be both us take.
As we heave in our breathing, our skin will take its loosened shape.
Barbara, when you take confession, the priest weeps in the knape of your neck
But all his tears will be drying by the time we both undress.

You shouldn’t feel like a widow when I’m still living!
You’re not the type, I think, who should be disappearing.

Slip out of that wedding band, sweep aside the picture frames.
Now that all these years have passed, let us both be done with the grieving game.
Lover, you don’t need that veil, you don’t have to feel so chaste!
Now that all these years have passed, let us both be done with the grieving game.

MAN’S BEST FRIENDS

In the fields where we have put food to grow,
behind the metal gates that shatter claws of scavengers we rue,
man’s best friends bark at the fruit we bear.
We pluck off of tired vines, burn the branches that once held it there.

To home we, where the window frames
a mirror of what lives wild and what comes when we call for it by name.
And in the home, our season’s work shares a fate
into the open mouths, readying the bellies that always wait.

It’s almost worth the effort of the the prayer
for being on the side that is prepared
when it’s life against life out there.

We tamed the ones that would once scratch in heat
at urges that fade as breath into night’s empty fears,
and we call them back to sleep beside our bed,
licking our face awake, begging us to be fed.

With food from the fields that we guard with all our strength,
behind the metal gates that protect our shared real estate
we say “good boy”, give a hand to a willing tongue
throw a bone to an eager jaw
rub a belly that’s always full.

CALLING ON ALL THIEVES
We’re calling on all thieves to climb out of your holes.
We’re forgiving the vandals, all the frauds and the perverse.
For those of you in prison, your teeth will no more break,
as you dine upon the keys, mothers bake into your cakes!

And industry was built to make metal out of work,
that shapes it in the shackles linking you along the line.
On the outside someone once was paid for what you do —
now you work for what you’ve put them through.

You broke a million windows, painted curses on the walls
you pulled triggers before the questions thought to give you pause.
And though we hold our noses when a vice’s stench grows thick,
the scent of roses thrives, only in comparison.

We’ll only grant the pardon if you will recommit!
And if you are reformed, that’s a disappointment!
We’re counting on the tears we spill for all the pain you cause,
forgiveness requires all your flaws.

Calling on the thieves (How we need you)
Calling on the frauds (We believe you)
When they call you out…. in the courtroom,

Think of the affection in our lungs
When the venom drips out of our tongues
As they read the sentence, your function is complete

EASY TO RESCUE (EASY TO SOOTHE)

When I was young I slept right through my father’s screams.
But when I came of age, I came so serene.
This thing that I believed it in, it’s really kind of neat.
What’s it called? The self! It is so complete!

I am the one who clings to floating seat.
I am the one who pulls the alarm oh so patiently.
Because if disaster strikes, I’ll have nothing to prove,
I’ll know where to go and what to do.

Lord knows I’m easy to rescue. Lord knows I’m easy to soothe.

And if I get those doubts, I never let them bother.
Worries are only sticks that bend in water.
It’s the physical world that makes these certainties
so much easier to believe.

When pinned between the trucks and fake army cars.
Be sure to always point those arms to the stars!
The half of us that’s safe will make the half in distress
so much easier to help!

Lord knows I’m easy to rescue…

And the paramedics and the police send me flowers
and they kiss these cheeks, ’cause they always want
to know where I’ll be, waiting for their work to bring relief.