The Easy Mark & The Old Maid

(album: Bad Books - 2010)

Some men collapse at the racetrack
They're wrong and beat up their eyes black
Others wilt in casinos
Roll dice and piss away speedboats
Some dissolve into bar stools
Scratched off in boxes and playoff pools
I spent myself on a psychic
I lost my way and a friend said she would find it

Man, you were wrong
Man, you were wrong
I asked for the future
She only sang me a song

Some men, they go make their own luck
Grow fat from feeding on lame ducks
The easy mark and the old maid
The invalid and the ingrate
Others wait for that high sign
Some holy hoax in the treeline
Me, I'm counting my canned food
Bunkered down, waiting out our slingshot moods

But what if I'm wrong?
What if I'm wrong?
I'll open my doors up
People, come sweep me along

Eyes are fixed and my palms are spread
Dissonance floats my shipwrecked head
God sleeps in the Gaza Strip
And man alone's left to live with it
The coin-flip faith of the optimist
It's beginners luck in a sewing kit
What to do when there is no fix
On the unflinching ambivalence?

But you say that's wrong
Hopeless and wrong
We re-thread your needle
For your sake, I'll play along