Waste Of Paint

(album: Lifted Or The Story Is In The Soil, Keep Your Ear To The Ground - 2002)

I have a friend; he's mostly made of pain
And he wakes up, drives to work and straight back home again
He once cut one of my nightmares out of paper
I thought it was beautiful, I put it on a record cover
And I tried to tell him that he had a sense
Of color and composition so magnificent

And he said, "Thank you please, but your flattery
It's truly not becoming me
Your eyes are poor – you're blind, you see
No beauty could have come from me
I'm a waste of breath, of space, of time"

I knew a woman; she was dignified and true
And her love for her man was one of her many virtues
Until one day she found out that he had lied
And she decided the rest of her life from that point on would be a lie
But she was grateful for everything that had happened
And she was anxious for all that would come next

But then she wept – what did you expect?
In that big old house with the cars she kept
And such is life she often said
With one day leading to the next
You get a little closer to your death
Which was fine with her, she never got upset
And with all the days she may have left
She would never clean another mess
Or fold his shirts or look her best
She was free to waste away alone

Last night my brother he got drunk and drove
And this cop he pulled him off to the side of the road
And he said, "Officer, officer, you got the wrong man
No, no, I'm a student of medicine, the son of a banker, you don't understand!"
The cop said, "No one got hurt; you should be thankful
And your carelessness, it is something awful

And no, I can't just let you go
And though your father's name is known
Your decisions now are yours alone
You're nothing but a stepping-stone
On a path to debt, to loss, to shame"

Last few months I've been living with this couple
Yeah, you know the kind who buy everything in doubles
Oh, they fit together like a puzzle
And I love their love and I am thankful
That someone actually receives the prize that was promised
By all those fairytales that drugged us

And they still do me; I'm sick, lonely
No laurel tree; just green envy
Will my number come up eventually?
Like love's some kind of lottery
Where you scratch and see what's underneath
It's sorry: just one cherry, play again, get lucky

So I've been hanging out down by the train's depot
No, I don't ride; I just sit and watch the people there
And they remind me of windup cars in motion
The way they spin and turn and jockey for positions
And I wanna scream out that it all is nonsense
All your life's one track – can't you see it's pointless?

But just then my knees give under me
My head feels weak and suddenly
It's clear to see it's not them but me
Who's lost my self-identity
And I hide behind these books I read
While scribbling my poetry
Like art could save a wretch like me
With some ideal ideology
That no one could hope to achieve
And I'm never real – it's just a sketch of me
And everything I made is trite and cheap
And a waste of paint, of tape, of time

So now I park my car down by the cathedral
Where the floodlights point up at the steeples
Choir practice was filling up with people
I could hear the sound escaping as an echo
Sloping off the ceiling at an angle
And when the voices blend they sound like angels
I hope there's some room still in the middle
But when I lift my voice up now to reach them
The range is too high way up in heaven

And so I hold my tongue, forget the song
Tie my shoes, start walking off
And try to just keep moving on
With my broken heart and my absent god
And I have no faith but it's all I want
To be loved and believe in my soul, in my soul
In my soul, in my soul