Song For The Stray Cat On The Fence

(album: The Volatile Utopian Real Estate Market - 2014)

I skipped class and took the number five bus
All the way east, just to see where it ends
Smoked a cigarette at Udall Station
Got back on the bus again
We've been this way since you met me
Hearts not heavy, but empty
And once a song could raise me up, but now there's nothing, so I stumbled home a broken man
With blood on my hands, dead on my feet
Shot down where I stand
With blood on my hands, dead on my feet
Shot where I stand

Freedom is beautiful and terrible, it's nothing soft and sweet
It's used bullets on the sidewalk, fires across the street
It's you moving in with your new boyfriend in Oakland
It's a pack of wild dogs on a road without a street lamp
It's roaches in the bathroom, mice in the kitchen
And no one left to blame for the way I've been living
It's mice in the kitchen, roaches in the bathroom
And no one left to blame

I woke up late and missed class again
And so I brewed a pot of coffee and went back to bed
Snatch some bread selling junk from the back of the shed
Hop the fence, because the front's being watched by the feds
We've been this way since we've been alive, reckless and shy
So I set fire to the house and took off running
I hope that you won't mind
I burned down the house to get myself out of this hell alive
I burned down the house to get myself out
I hope you don't mind

Freedom is nothing soft and sweet, it's beautiful and terrible
It's admitting everything that I don't want anyone to know
It's telling people that I love I stole from them when they weren't looking
It's fucking up so many times that they won't pick up when I call them
It's watching people die because they got back in it
And knowing that I don't have any say in it
It's watching people die, and knowing I don't get any say