What You Live By

(album: Little By Little... - 2005)

Meet me up on 99, beneath the Marco Polo sign
I'll be the one with a box of wine and a hundred dollar car
We could talk about the lives we've led
And count the reasons we're not dead
Or maybe we could talk instead about the ways in which we are

Always nothing or too much to say
Only so many sides of the record to play
And the song that got stuck in my head said
You die by what you live by.
You will die by what you live by.
You will die by what you live by every time...

Like carnivores to carnal pleasures,
So were we to desperate measures:
Melting into stagnant puddles, beat down by the sun.
I went to school; I didn't stay
Spoke right up when I had nothing good to say
(and I said it to anyone who would listen)

Lay me down in the bed that I made
Starved for sleep by the shrill serenade
Singing over and over:
You die by what you live by;
You will die by what you live by;
You will die by what you live by, every time
You die by what you live by;
You will die by what you live by;
You will die by what you live by, every time...