Pink-Slips

(album: The Silver Gymnasium - 2013)

Three brides before breakfast. These rails just wrecked us. My right hand on my heart while my left hand snaps your necklace.

Each day gets a little more scary. We're holding on, in a way, but just barely. Moms and Dads are rationing their cash for the commissary. But I can't start without going all the way it's a habit someone gave me. The nursemaid of the blank page. A canary of the American eclipse. A profiteer picking up pink slips.

This wish just to go back, hey... when I know wasn't ever, ever happy! Show me my best memory it's probably super crappy. Nine years down in Texas, with sluts of both sexes, liars, lumps, and drug addicts, and drunks; I love my friends, but I can't stop without going all the way, and I've been that way since '83. The midwife of the jetlife. Oh, genie with a golden spliff. A prostitute paid in pink slips.

I crashed my Cadillac in the valley of mirrors. When the call came, there was nobody here. When they came from the communists, I kissed them on the lips. Then they came for the singers, in a haze of pink slips.

I guess I was just dreaming and drifting. I guess I was artificially lifted. Only happy until the age of ten is still a gift, but we can't go back to those "227" days. It's just a dream we all were having. Hey, mariner in the dirt trade. Oh, postman of the post-apocalypse from Academy Awards to pink slips!

And I showered my Corvette with Moët for years, but now I'm standing in the rain drinking the champagne of beers. They say, "Who's that shadow sneaking off behind the pier? He was rushed and then he was rattled, but now he's finally in the clear to be a refugee from the rat race, in his white tuxedo and his sad-face. A music group that your dad plays, singing songs about autumn days. He's the laureate of the Granite State, and now he doesn't even write, he just riffs. And they'll cover up his coffin with pink slips."