Beady Eyes On The Horizon

(album: Let Live & Let Ghosts - 2008)

There's a dead man hanging, slumped over the steering wheel
Of an interstate runaway bursting into flames
And the devil was gently breathing
Sleeping face-down in my apartment
And like all his friends I'm growing tired of his games

And there's a homeless man arranging his hands
Grooving to the beat radiating from a police scanner
Who said, "The air is feeling good to me, as cool and ripe as air can be"
And a woman who sincerely believes in UFOs
And who can blame her when the stars are hanging overhead
Dangling by a thread
Floating ten thousand feet off the ground

(This was a story told to me when I was just the age of 17
One which God Himself dictated to me
He said, "This is how all this shit's gonna be when I blow your little planet into smithereens
Blow your little planet into smithereens"
It haunted my dreams like an accident on replay on the TV screen)

She sees faces in her dreams, strange machines she'd never seen
Blueprints of submarines to reassemble in a time of dire need
And there were preachers in the desert, waving to the crowd
Dictating seven angry letters from a man up in the clouds

And there were 27 soldiers telling 27 lies
And a hole inside a hurricane with a pair of beady eyes
A pair of beady eyes
Looking down
Onto the pavement while the stars are gathered 'round
Because they all want a front seat when shit starts going down
Because the sun is just a supernova turned the other way around

There were strangers in the subway
And men in limousines making deals
And swapping photographs of cans of gasoline
There are no angels in the woodwork or devils on the ground
And they are looking through a hurricane's tectonic wall of sound
And a man who smokes his cigarettes the other way around
And she is looking in behind him from inside a wall of sound
And she is dancing with the neon because
The air is feeling good against her arms and legs and fingertips are measuring the distance
In the spaces in between me and you and all your friends when there's no time to load a weapon
No time to make amends,
And people frozen in their tracks there staring at the sky at a hole inside a hurricane revealing

A pair of beady eyes
A pair of beady eyes
Looking down
Onto the pavement while the stars are gathered 'round
Because they all want a front seat when shit starts going down
Because the sun is just a supernova turned the other way around

This is not a test, this is the real thing
This is not a test, this is the real thing