"The Girl With The Weight Of The World In Her Hands"

She won't recover from her losses,
She's not chosen this path, but she watches who it crosses
Maybe move to the right, maybe move to the left
So we can all see her pain she wears like a banner on her chest
And we all say it's sad, and we think it's a shame
And she's called to our attention, but we do not call her name,
The girl with the weight of the world in her hands.

We're busy with our happiness, busy with our plans
I wonder if alone she wants it taken from her hands
But if things didn't get any harder
She might miss her sacred chance to go a consecrated martyr,

The girl with the weight of the world in her hands.

I wonder which saint that lives inside a bead
will grant her consolation when she counts upon her need
It makes us all angry though we feign to care
But who will be the scale to weigh the cross she has to bear,
The girl with the weight of the world in her hands.

"Is the glass half-full or empty?" I ask her as I fill it
She said it doesn't really matter, pretty soon you're bound to spill it.
With the half logic language of the sermon she delivers
And the way she smiles so knowingly at me gives me the shivers
I pull the blanket higher when I'm finally safe at home
And she'll take a hundred with her, but she always sleeps alone,
The girl with the weight of the world in her hands.

"Galileo"

Galileo's head was on the block the crime was looking up the truth as the bombshells of my daily fears explode i try to trace them to my youth then you had to bring up reincarnation over a couple of beers the other night now i'm serving time for mistakes made by another in another lifetime how long till my soul gets it right can any human being ever reach that kind of light i call on the resting soul of galileo king of night vision king of insight i think about my fear of motion which i never could explain some other fool across the ocean years ago must have crashed his little airplane how long till my soul gets it right can any human being ever reach that kind of light i call on the resting soul of galileo king of night vision king of insight i'm not making a joke you know me i take everything so seriously if we wait for the time till all souls get it right then at least i know there'll be no nuclear annihilation in my lifetime I'm still not right i offer thanks to those before me that's all i've got to say maybe you squandered big bucks in your lifetime now I've got to pay but then again it feels like some sort of inspiration to let the next life off the hook or she'll say look what i had to overcome from my last life i think i'll write a book how long till my soul gets it right can any human being ever reach that kind of light i call on the resting sould of galileo king of night vision king of insight how long, how long, how long

"Ghost"

There's a letter on the desktop that i dug out of a drawer the last truce we ever came to from our adolescent war and i start to feel a fever from the warm air through the screen you come regular like seasons shadowing my dreams and the mississippi's mighty but it starts in Minnesota at a place where you could walk across with five steps down and i guess that's how you started like a pinprick to my heart but at this point you rush right through me and i start to drown and there's not enough room in this world for my pain signals cross and love gets lost and time passed makes it plain of all my demon spirits i need you the most i'm in love with your ghost i'm in love with your ghost dark and dangerous like a secret that gets whispered in a hush (don't tell a soul) when i wake the things i dreamt about you last night make me blush (don't tell a soul) when you kiss me like a lover then you sting me like a viper i go follow to the river play your memory like the piper and i feel it like a sickness how this love
is killing me but i'd walk into the fingers of your fire willingly and dance the edge of sanity i've never been this close in love with your ghost ooooh: unknowing captor you'll never know how much you pierce my spirit but i can't touch you can you hear it a cry to be free or i'm forever under lock and key as you pass through me now i see your face before me i would launch a thousand ships to bring your heart back to my island as the sand beneath me slips as i burn up in your presence and i know now how it feels to be weakened like Achilles with you always at my heels and my bitter pill to swallow is the silence that i keep that poisons me i can't swim free the river is too deep though i'm baptized by your touch i am no worse at most in love with your ghost

"Joking"

You said the world was magic i was wide-eyed and laughing we were dancing up to the bright side forget about your ego forget about your pride and you will never have to compromise but you were only joking we talked about our mothers kissed the wounds of our fathers i could've been your sister i would've been your brother you kissed me like i was a soldier heading for war i'm a dying man but i don't know what for but you were only joking you were only joking brother gravel and glass on the bottom of my feet i bruised my heels on the swollen street we were girls in bars we were boys on the town bumping like a pinball off a careless crowd you said good friends are hard to come by i laughed and bought you a beer 'cause it's too corny to cry well sentiment given and sentiment lost you shook it off with a smirk and a toss and you were only joking you were only joking brother

"Jonas & Ezekial"

I left my anger in a river running highway five new hampshire vermont border by college farms hubcaps and falling rocks voices in the woods and the mountaintops i used to search for reservations and native lands before i realized everywhere stand there have been tribal feet running wild as fire some past life sister of my desire jonas and ezekial hear me now steady now don't come out i'm not ready for the dead to show its face whose turn is it anyway? when i was young my people taught me well give back what you take or you'll go to hell it's not the devil's land you know it's not that kind every devil i meet becomes a friend of mine every devil i meet is an angel in disguise jonas and ezekial hear me now steady now don't come out i'm not ready for the dead to show its face whose turn is it anyway? white chain rope fear be still my dear a bullet in the head now he's dead a friend of a friend someone said he was an activist with a very short life i think there's a lesson here he died without a fight in the war over land where the world began prophecy says it's where the world will end but there's a tremor growing in our own backyard fear in our heads fear in our hearts prophets in the graveyard jonas and ezekiel hear me now stead now don't come out i'm not ready for the dead to show its face whose turn is it anyway? jonas and ezekial hear me now steady now i feel your ghost about i'm not ready for the dead to show its face whose angel are you anyway?

"Love Will Come To You"

Guess i wasn't the best one to ask me myself with my face pressed up against love's glass to see the shiny toy i've been hoping for the one i never can afford the wide world spins and spits turmoil and the nations toil for peace but the paws of fear upon your chest only love can soothe that beast and my words are paper tigers no match for the predator of pain inside her i say love will come to you hoping just because i spoke the words that they're true as if I've offered up a crystal ball to look through where there's now one there will be two i was born under the sign of cancer like brushing cloth i smooth the wrinkles for an answer i close my eyes and wish you fine (i'm always closing my eyes wishing i'm fine) even though i know you're not this time (even though i'm not this time) i say love will come to you hoping just because i spoke the words that they're true as if i've offered up a crystal ball to look through where there's now one there will be two dodging your memories a field of knives always on the outside looking in on other's lives i say love will come to you hoping just because i spoke the words that they're true as if i've offered up a crystal ball to look through where there's now one there will be two and i wish her insight to battle love's blindness strength from the milk of human kindness a safe place for all the pieces that scattered learn to pretend there's more than love that matters

"Virginia Woolf"

Some will strut and some will fret see this an hour on the stage others will not but they'll sweat in their hopelessness in the rage we're all the same the men of anger and the women of the page they published your diary and that's how i got to know you key to the room of your own and a mind without end here's a young girl on a kind of a telephone line through time the voice at the other end comes like a long-lost friend so i know i'm alright my life will come my life will go still i feel it's alright I just got a letter to my soul when my whole life is on the tip of my tongue empty pages for the no longer young the apathy of time laughs in my face you say each life has its place the hatches were battened thunderclouds rolled and the critics stormed battles surrounded the white flag of your youth but if you need to know that you weathered the storm of cruel mortality a hundred years later i'm sitting here living proof so you know it's alright your life will come your life will go still you'll feel it's
alright someone will get a letter to your soul when your whole life was on the tip of you tongue empty pages for the no longer young the apathy of time laughed in your face did you hear me say each life has its place the place where you hold me is dark in a pocket of truth the moon has swallowed the sun and the light of the earth and so it was for you when the river eclipsed your life but sent your soul like a message in a bottle to me and it was my rebirth so we know it's alright life will come and life will go still we know it's alright someone will get a message to your soul then you know it's alright and you feel it's alright (when my whole life is on the tip of my tongue empty pages for the no longer young) then you know it's alright and you feel it's alright (each life has its place you say each life has its place) it's alright

"Chickenman"

I am an only child born of the wild riddled to spend my time defending my land you are my only one born in the sun riddled to spend your time defending my plan dead dog on the highway median cats are growling at me i turn my lights on brighter counting through the night ride one more life for the taker chickenman one more song for the maker chickenman on the road to Athens i saw a dead deer on the highway i slipped into a desert five prairie dogs and a rabbit i was running down on queen street i saw a woman on the sidewalk she was beaten by a stranger danger danger danger one more life for the taker chickenman chicken-man chickenman hold my hand one more life forthe maker hold my hand chickenman i was on the road to Austin i met a man on the highway he sold me junk and conversation he was wise and dirty from the wather i said darkness into darkness all the carnage of my journeys makes it hard to be living he said it's a long road to be forgiven one more life for the taker chickenman chickenman chickenman hold my hand one more song for the maker chickenman chickenman chickenman hold my hand i am an only child born of the wild riddled to spend my time defending my land you are my only one born in the sun riddled to spend you time defending my plan i went looking for a car found myself beneath the stars i went looking for a girl found a man and his world chickenman chickenman chickenman hold my hand i am an only child hold my hand chickenman chickenman chickenman hold my hand

"Airplane"

Up on the airplane nearer my god to thee i start making a deal inspired by gravity if i did wrong i won't do it again i can be sweet and good and nice and if i had enemies they're friends i hold onto my life with the grip of a vice up on the airplane nearer my god to thee i start making a deal inspired by gravity that little spot on the ground is my hometown i like to call it my home and it's sweet i'd rather take a seat down there than a throne up here up above 30,000 feet and i'm up on the airplane i never should've read my horo- scope or the fortune on the bubble gum strip saying what you think won't happen will great thing to read before a trip on an airplane pilot says the big blue sky's like a swimming pool big fluffy clouds like a feather bed i'd rather have a real pillow underneath my head lying in my bed which is in my hometown which is on the ground far from an airplane far from an airplane up on the airplane up on the (i'll be making a deal) up on the (i'll be making a deal) up on the
(i'll be making a deal)