Asa Phelps Is Dead

(album: Ghost Stories - 2000)

Hey brother can you spare the time?
Skin and bones that's melting in a backwards way to grow.
Out of heart and out of mind,
And kiss me in the rear view when you go

Dying at 23,
I'm trying on my apathy with a tired conversation floating in this ether sky,
Tried again too many times, and doesn't it get worse
Sit and stare

Seems like we're running out of dimes.
Bodies that we burn as fuel, irreversible decline.
Pocket lint and turpentine
Warm my insides, wash these ashes from my eyes
Death with an attitude, I'm putting on my Sunday suit
Tired as a conversation held one too many times
A year or two or three or ten or twenty more
Waiting

[Spoken:]
So close to dying,
Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again.
Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her.
And I felt ready to live it all again, too.
As if that blind rage had washed me clean,
Rid me of hope; for the first time,
In that night, alive with signs and stars,
I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.
Finding it so much like myself
So like a brother, really
I felt that I had been happy, and that I was happy again.
For everything to be consummated,
For me to feel less alone,
I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators
The day of my execution
And that they greet me with cries of hate.