Les Savy Fav

All nerve endings shut down.
Stiff lipped at the countdown.
All systems are go,
All systems are gauche,
All systems are ghosts.

In a can,
In a cupboard,
In a submarine,
There's nothing left inside.
In a basket at the bottom of the guillotine
Is where the sailor died.
He never said a word
To the jury or the press
And when the ax-blade bit his neck,
"Set me free" is all he said.

In a pixel,
In a portrait,
In a T.V. screen
There's nothing left to hide.
Stitched each instant by the firing electron beam,
Let the camera man decide.
And he never said a word
To the jury or the press
When the on-air light turned red,
"Cut Away" is all he said.

When she opened it up,
She dropped her coffee cup,
And when the cup hit the ground
The whole damn house came stumbling down.
Good by my memory.
From this point on I'm unsettling.

In Brooklyn we stay home.

You can drive a car
But you have to ride a horse.
We ride our lives,
Of course you know,
From barn to yard
To wood to road.
There was once a hand
That would carry me anywhere.
That was 19 years ago,
Now my feet know where to go.

Great,
These things happen,
I've got to hand it to my heart;
It should have shattered long ago,
But the goddamned thing won't fall apart.

We're traveling at the speed of sound.

It's a good, great place to crash a car,
But I don't think we have to do it.
Throw our notebooks out the window
And put our family names into it.
I've lost track of the ambulance chasers
Coming up behind the car.
It's a 5 car pile-up,
That's a 1 heart pile-up.

Miracles exist,
So many that it's shocking.
Surely we can't resist
To sometimes go
Sherlocking.
This hairpin is a clue,
If this headstone is a mystery
Whose tenant has been screwed
By high winds and history.

There is a snake inside the office.
There is a weight inside the airplane.
The scientist creates
Another strain.

The pin-up was pent-up,
Her patience was spent up,
On clothing and close-ups,
And 2 minute touch-ups.
Blown by the airbrush,
Dolled up and drugged up,
By 5 minute fuck-ups,
With hairbrush and blood lust.
But now that she's safe
And away from the scene,
She keeps getting voicemail
On her message machine.
They sing, "Call me when you want to have it all again."

Leave a teardrop on the rooftop
To evaporate at dawn.
Maybe it's an S.O.S. for who it falls upon.
I know that it's a long shot
But it's one I'm counting on.

Dreaming Dimwits take a stand,
On this night we must demand,
Let the microscope be
Damned,
By the hammers in our hands.

Calmly we're dissolving
On the exit frame.

These are unusual fissions.

My eyes are smaller than my stomach is.
That is quite a meal for me.
I have lost my appetite lately.

The basement is where we wait
For the storm to break.
Someone is lost outside,
Through the rain we hear them cry.

Deafened by the sound
Of the apples falling down.
They were rotting on the ground
When the winter came around.

My bedroom feels just like a parking lot
That's been closed up for the night
Asleep beneath the buzzing light.

Consider this incentive.
Don't you even get it?
You planted it,
Let's wet it.
You earn it and we spend it.

Walk 5 feet above the mountain,
The landscape remains the same.
Walk 5 feet below the ground and
The landscape is unchanged.
I know my home's eroding,
The mountain rises again.
I've seen the ocean rising,
Only the stones remain.
I've heard the Titan stirring,
I don't know who to blame.

This water tastes like wine.
This water tastes like turpentine.
I didn't travel all this way
Just to leave a trail of tears behind.
I didn't travel all this way
Just to drag a tail behind.
I didn't travel all this way
Just to leave my hands and nails behind.

Everybody prays that
The rain will shatter the dam.
The water will turn the mortar to sand.
The engineers have done
All they can
But we're damned.

Little lost lamb,
I've done all I can,
The barn door has blown shut
And the brook is rising up.
To move,
To breath,
We must cherish these.
We have these things like feet.

The townies saw a monster
But the monster saw a man.
The coroner's report
Found a flower in his hand.
Before pitchforks and torches,
Ferdinand made his last stand.
The farmer dropped his sword
And went back to his plow.
The children it had frightened
Were even more scared now.
The minister and mayor
Told the people to be proud.

And when they went to bed
They tossed and turned all night.
But when the sun came up
They never saw the light.
And when the worms had finished them,
They knew that they were right.

This mountain has
A mind of its own.

This house is an ancient tomb.
Be warned.
Born in 1974
With the blood stains on the door.

This house is a monument
You see.
Erect in 1983
In memory of what you've done to me.

This house is a freight train
And it's mine.
Back in 1989
They found my body on the Morris?Essex line.

A cord, accord,
A car, a call.
The hospital said it would
Gladly repay it all.
I'm born, I'm bored,
I'm not at all.
This body needs an overhaul.

The blast from the cannon
Was more than they could take
And ever since that summer
They've been something of a flake.
We pray for them at dinner,
We pray for them at dawn,
We pray that when they grow up
That they'll be dead and gone.
We pray that they will pass us by
But they keep coming on.

Wake up!
I'm coming over.

Watch the way the milk has curdled in the cradle.
There's a rattle underneath the kitchen table.
We're ignoring it as best as we are able.
But the air in there is static and unstable.
There's a rapping at the door.

Who rocks the party
That rocks the body?

We rock the party
That rocks the body.

I have got my coat on
And I'm headed toward the gates of the great estate.
They can't loose the dogs on us
Because the dogs like us more than the dogs like them.

See the servants in the southwest corner of the yard.
They've got booze
And they've got bonfires.
Who needs horse shoes?
Who need lawn darts?
Fuck the champagne!
We want gin!
We'll take back toad hall again!

Call the cops to hall us in,
They're already here,
Up on the chandelier,
This is the party of the year.
The thing falls down in a smash of glass.
The chief of police is on his
Ass.
The kitchen staff is
Up in stitches,
They're burning up their
Master's britches.

Kidnapped!
I was kidnapped.
I dreamed I was kidnapped.
By a guy with a moustache
And a chick with an eyepatch
Who though they could trade me back
For some quick cash.
But when they relayed the bargain
My family said,
"we'll pay half that"

The haggling went on for days,
The days went on for weeks
And weeks for years.
Riding in the trunk was never fun
But soon I plum ran out of tears.
They camped us in the woods
We cooked canned goods
They never threatened me with pain.
They treated cops politely
Driving nightly
Always using coded names.
So if slowly I could trust them
Dare I say it even love them
Who's to blame.

I learned my alphabet
And letterset while setting up
My latest ransom note.
They got me correspondence classes,
Got me glasses,
Gave me dropcloths in the cold.
My fondest memories
Are from my hostage crises
I know it's strange.
Although we got so close
You know they never even
Told me their real names.

He was a rare orchid dealer
Whose dealings were coarse.
The c.i.t.e.s. cited permits
But he could show no source.
Did they bloom in his mouth?
Did they bloom in his hand
Did they bloom in his pocket?
Did they bloom on demand?

The doctor who invented anesthesia
Could not anesthetize himself
To the pain and shame he felt
When it wore off on a patient
During his first amputation.

This giving in is wearing thin.

I was a member of a succescful society.
There was a sucesfull someone inside of me
But then it turned around
And inside out and upside down.
They trapped an wrapped and packed
Me shifty out of town.

Crawling can be beautiful
It sure beats standing still
Crawling on your hands and knees
Takes self-control and skill.

Can we declare, though scared,
This room to be a sovereign state
Where citizens share skins
And sins and copulate.
'cause if we can I think we should
And shouldn't waste a breath.
A baby place is faced
With settling on baby steps.
People party here with me.
Cause the party people's party
Puts the fear in me.
Let loose here with me.
Cause suits suit suits
But the noose suits thee.

Crawling can be beautiful
It sure beats standing still
Crawling on your hands and knees
Can be a show of will.

Who here finds this world distracting?
Who here finds this world a bore?
Who here thinks we're all play acting
And that the show's piss poor?
I for one am dazzled,
I don't care if dazzled blind,
Rapt, enraptured, captured
By every little thing I find.

The pen in the pocket
The fall down the stairs
The fork in the socket
These are our daily dares.
These are my concerns
These are my disregards
This is what ive learned
And ive forgoten so far.
Im making lead from gold
Im turning friends to err
Carries into cabals
Victories to dispair.
It hits you like a brick
It hits you like a smell
It doesnt bat a lash
It brings on fainting spells.
Use sentiment like aloe
Use sentiment like mace
Use sentimental explanations
Of how we got to this place.
I got fucked by fate
On fate and I's first date
And now i know i knew
Breaking up is hard to do.

Look-look-looking in the pink
While living in the red
Pissing in the sink-sink-sink
Too drunk to find the head
Beg-beg-begging for the black
Make me rich or make me dead

I want a little pick me up
So I won't stumble down tonight
Considering staying alive
Hitchhiking on the Disco Drive

Sometimes jobs turn to vacations
But always I must earn
Waiting for standing ovations
For filing my tax returns
Searching for zippers
But finding only seams
The seamstress for strippers
Must suspects my dirty peeking schemes*

I want a little pick me up
So I wont stumble down tonight
Considering staying alive
Wish I could only Disco Drive

A man can only do his best
I'm skipping steps and I'm taking breaths
Hold your horses, cool your jets
You can't make me be finished yet

Don't trust the poets, they want to get paid
They're playing their trade to the art of getting laid
Don't trust the prophets, their visions are fudged
They're buying our houses while selling us floods

The hours will get you
The owls will get you
When I was a swear word
The hours we shot-gunned
The hours will get you
The hours will get you
The owls will get you
The hours will get you

The singer of the band
Has been encased
In a circuit board formed
From arsenic and old lace.
The piano has been dropped.
A c-note hits the cop.
So he would turn away
While we're cleaning up the slop.
This is the bishop's finger.
This is the bishop's hand.
Onto Jesus' body
The people place demands.
They're pointing with their pistols,
While we're reaching for the sky.
The soundtrack of their lives
Is an eye for an eye...

Hail hail the talk show,
Cocked after cocktails.
I lied and I lied...
God save the techno!
The sequencers don't know
When it died, when it died...

Edison put the gun in our hands.
The black bear put
The muzzle to its muzzle.
The dogwood didn't care
But the maple was troubled.
Trademark, this is a trademark,
This move was trademarked in 1883.

Don't place your bets on me just yet
I'm only half-way home.

This racket takes it's toll
My scams are smooth and cold.
I'm bathing in a fountain
And I'm not getting old.
I crave to catch an edge;
Break bones and cartilage.
Send back the architects of Carthage
Take down the flag
Forget the pledge.
I'm only half-way home.
Puff out your chest and step to the sun
Its done its best to burn everyone
Whose gotten half-way home.

Cut me in 2 3
1 2 save, 1 2 waste, and 1 2 eat.
I cut myself in 3
1 4 us, 1 4 them, and 1 4 me.

Drinking pots of coffee
Till every drop is gone.
Painting a portrait
Of Ponce deLeon
Out of clipped nail
From the hands and the feet
Of every lost and stubborn soul
I hope to ever meet.

Once when walking in the woods
I came upon a burning bush.
"What wants you vision?", says I
And it spoke, and I quote,

"Apocalypse can go down easy
You gotta know it's an acquired taste.
You're sacrifice can't please me
I'm dead set to destroy this place.
Hip hip for imperfection,
I want to make a mess.
I've got a secret theory
That disarray works best
And though it don't work often
Oh my God when it does-
Watch as the outburst softens
It's had its way with us.

They're scared of the silence
But be scared-er of the sound.
Hearts are not only beating
They are all counting down.
You're not ready for disorder.
You're not ready for decay.
Have you been staving
Time and aging
Sloughing dead skin away?

I must confess I said with a smile,
"I'm frightened as a child.
And I suspect by
The smoke in your eye
You're thinking 'So am I.'

Apocalypse can go down easy
You gotta know it's an acquired taste.
Our sacrifice can't please thee
You're dead set to destroy this place.
If the aspirin you take
Doesn't cure your headache
Why do docs propose
The headache's in your head?
And if the orgasms we fake
Take their toll and take the cake
Why do they suppose
We're better off in bed?

And then the bush said,
"You and I, we were meant to be together.
You and I, we are gonna hang together.
You and I, we are going down together."

If when running from the flood
It overtakes you.
Crushed by slow waterfalls and such
The ocean breaks you.
Let go of everything you know
And love and fear
Let go of everything you know
And disappear.

If you've been rolling with a crowd
Who want to save you
And all you want is to forget
Every speech they gave you.
Let go of everything you know
And love and fear
Let go of everything you know
And disappear.

If you disappear without a trace:
A.)They won't give chase.
B.)No hearts will break.
C.)As some must do.
D.)Take me with you.

What we don't know can fill a truck
What we don't know cannot hurt us
Well, is that so?
We're hard to destruct
Well, is that so?
Why do we get crushed?

Prepare the isolation chamber
I'm going in
And all the people there will wonder
"Can we go with him?"

Tell me now you're only kidding
When you say "We'll pass away"
Tell me now this yarn we're spinning
Doesn't end on judgement day

All tragic monsters are crying for themselves
In attics and in basements
In cages and prison cells
Wishing that the citizen's myth they could dispel
Until you see the faces
In the limestone on the pipe
Don't tell the tragic monsters what loneliness is like

And is there any wonder
That some misfits lose their mind?
Left to fumble asunder
In the world deaf, dumb, and blind
And can they sense our justice
When they commit their crime?
How can they abide our justice?
They're already doing time

What we don't know (x7)
Can't hurt us yet

He's a bad mother fucker,
16 pairs of shoes in a closet
6 feet deep, and 6 feet wide, and 6 feet high.
Blackouts on Thursday!
Total blackouts are where it's at!
I'm going back to high school
Where I can make out like a cat.
It's a shake down.
A mental break down.
Is this a take down?
We're gonna make out.

The band sort of sucks,
But the audience sucks too much.
I'm going back to high school
Where the audience plays rough.

I got myself elected.
I got myself rejected.
I'm gonna run again.

You're bringing us down.
Hear the symphony in the 5-man band,
Try to sympathize but you can't understand.

Set my mind to intervalometer,
It moves so slow from desk to dresser,
Hits the ground without a sound,
It took 5 years just to get down.
Who put up the flag?
We haven't got a door
Yet if they storm the fort tonight,
Leave your pistol by your bed.
We have jeopardized our situation,
Disengage the ammunition,
We are on a mercy mission.

Take away the golden epaulettes
From the fallen dead cadets.
Let their rank stand as their epitaphs,
Throw their bodies in the acid bath.

Drop the C-code and go for the gusto,
The man at the plant swears the foreman must go.
If the chief says, "Fight!",
Let the chief go ahead.
The squaw and the scout will stay in bed.
If the chief says, "Jump!",
I say, "Not I."
If the chief says, "Jump!",
I say, "How high?"

When we were little kids,
We tried the seven deadly sins
In the attic every summertime.
The wet felt smelling silent kind.
We'd play light as a feather,
Stiff as a board
And you'd press to my hips
As we'd slip through the floor.

The grey, grey ghost is coming out of the
Bright, white sheet that was wrapped about him.
The shade, shade, shade could have been mistaken, but I
Swear that the sunlight was shooting straight through him.
Let's make a mess of this banquet
While your bones are soaked in blood.
When your skin and cells are bankrupt,
You'll be deposit in the dust.

Let's try to stay soft
And remember to bend-
The chance to get supple
Will not come again
'Cause in time
You will find
Rigor mortis sets in.
Well I failed and I failed
But my failures were passing,
Grew hair and a tail
And was all the while asking,
"Does it stay like this?" and
"Will it end like this?"

I'm afraid that you're fading away,
You're not coming in clear.
I'm afraid that the games that we've played
Have turned desperate and dear.

All that you cherish will perish.
All that you punish will pass.
I know you'll hit the ground running
When you ditch the road at last.
Well, we failed and we failed
But our failures were passing,
Grew hair and a tail
And were all the while asking,
"Does it stay like this?" and
"Will it end like this?"
Is this supposed to hurt
Or are we sensitive?"

There'll be no red rose
The day you die.
There'll be flies round your nose
And rings round your eyes.
The clock ticks on,
We don't have a say.
We let one hand wash the other's
Dirt away.

We're doing way too much,
We do it way too often.
What used to be a crutch
Has become a coffin.
It's been good to be alive,
But I've simply got to go.
Someone's on the other line
And they're calling for my soul.

Hello
To my halo,
Goodbye
To my glands.
You can't
Move a mountain
With a book of plans.
You can't
Break a heart
With a
Birthday wish,
You can't
Make a wave
In a Petri dish.

Tell them
We think they're starving.
Tell them
We think they're deaf.
Tell them
We've seen them carving curse words
Into their desks.
Tell them
That I'm a liquid.
Tell them
It's been a gas.
Tell them
They're frozen solid
Just behind
The looking glass.

The mirror's just flat,
The mirror's just glass,
Into the mirror
Let's try not to pass.

Hold on to your genre,
Your genre's got a hold on you.
Hold on to your hair-do,
It's the only thing to hold onto.
Hold on to your genre,
Your genre's got a hold on you.
Get up on the vapor,
'Cause the solid's tough to hold on to.

There's a promise in the back room.
See it written in the bathroom.
You tell a little lie and then you
Try to get us in your bedroom.
You see our little lives and then you
Try to drag you to your death tomb.
I've been checking the seams of your
Red velvet blazer.
Now I'm haunted by dreams of the
Things I've found hid there:
All the rabbits you've vanished,
All the cards that you've killed,
All the dawns that you've banished
With too many pills.

Together
Forever,
The pity,
The pleasure,
The privilege,
The pressure,
The arteries
We sever.
The stillness,
It chills us,
But it's chills that we crave.
The stillness will fill us when we fill in our graves.

I never wanted something
Like nothing half this much.
I'd gladly trade my state
For nullity and such.
For once to stop this buzzing
And the lights inside my head.
Can I please have truly nothing
Once before I'm dead?

I've been checking the seams of your
Red velvet blazer.
And I'm seeing the lines of your
Will and your wish list:
And you wish you were nothing,
And you wish you were cold,
And you wish days meant something
So you'd stop getting old.

Back in the day you loved the night,
And you would feast with great delight.
A walnut coffin lined in silk,
And daughter's blood was mother's milk.
But now with fangs rust red as dusk,
A wet mouth in a dried up husk,
You try to make me one of "us."

Are you sick of being pretty?
Are you sick of being cool?
Are you alive beneath your makeup?
Or just an un-dead ghoul?

Pappa don't preach,
I beseech you man,
Your devilish deeds
Teach more than a teacher can.
What have we learned?
Which lessons won't stick?
Tracing the edges
Of wisdom and shit.

Knowing how the world works
Is not knowing how to work the world.

You're tracing its movements,
Predict its every turn;
You watch down from above
And record what you learn.
You're graphing the data
And tagging up our ears.
Complex simulations
With graph paper gears.

Wistful in his widow's peak,
So to speak, he stands.
A son confronts his father
With his hat in his hands.
All the things you never could do,
I never can.
All the things I blamed on you
I see I now do, too.

A handful of stories,
A house full of cards,
A mouthful of sorrys,
And a heart full up of scars.
I take a handful of you
And take a handful of me,
I put it in my mouth
And chew it up so thoroughly.

Dead tired.
Bone dry.
Admired,
Till I-
Can't make with the batteries,
Bad day at the cannery.
They're making a mess of me.
Best left tested by history.
I grab this mic,
I spike it to the ground.
The lightning's bad
But at least it's not loud.
The lighting's bad-
The band can't see the crowd
So I'm coming down.

There is no incident.
There's nothing incidental in this song.
There is no accident.
There's nothing accidental in this song.
There's no coincidence.
There's nothing coincidental in this song.

Meet me in the dollar bin-
It's a band I once was in,
Haven't done much better since.
This is no coincidence-
Been rubbing off our finger prints,
Covered up with phony skins,
This giving in has worn so thin
That you can see the beat within.
Born fat or flat chested,
The best of us tested.
We passed and we passed,
We passed out when we could.
We got old,
But we got good
And we did all
We said we would.

The singer of the band
Has been encased
In a circuit board formed
From arsenic and old lace.
The piano has been dropped.
A c-note hits the cop.
So he would turn away
While we're cleaning up the slop.
This is the bishop's finger.
This is the bishop's hand.
Onto Jesus' body
The people place demands.
They're pointing with their pistols,
While we're reaching for the sky.
The soundtrack of their lives
Is an eye for an eye...

Hail hail the talk show,
Cocked after cocktails.
I lied and I lied...
God save the techno!
The sequencers don't know
When it died, when it died...

Edison put the gun in our hands.
The black bear put
The muzzle to its muzzle.
The dogwood didn't care
But the maple was troubled.
Trademark, this is a trademark,
This move was trademarked in 1883.

Catching whispers on the phone
But the whispers get away.
Making entries in our diaries
With all the things we think they say.

Can you hear it?
I can't hear it!
Can you see it?
I can't see it!

We've been feeding the vermin,
Now they're hanging around.
Can't we take back the sermon
That we tossed to the crowd?
Obsessed with the excess
But stuffed with a crumb.
The lessons progress less
As professors succumb.
They're craving confusion
When starved of sense
And graven confusion
Has been heaven sent.

Can you do it?
I can't do it!
This is the way the sick people play:
Hands in their pockets, goose bumps on display.
This is the way the well people drink:
Mouths on the spigots of the sick people's sink.
In the town square,
In the city hall,
In the war room,
On a conference call,
They set the date to drop the bomb
And sit and wait with perfect calm.
I wanna do it!

If you call this living,
If you call that love,
If you'd call the cops before God above,
If you'd call the cops before God below,
If you call this culture,
Then I think you'll know,
The stone cold con and the 6-6-6,
We're trading our eyeballs in for asterisks.
We're trading our idols in for rapprochement.
We're burning the bridges that we're crossing on.
I wanna do it!

She was sweet sixteen,
Baby beauty queen.
Straight white teeth,
Bathed in beauty cream.
Priss don't drink
And priss don't smoke.
Shit don't stink
And don't take jokes.
Botoxed in bobby socks.
Cold as ice.
All the boys were like
White on rice.
The end result is still the same,
You can't go back the way you came.

Drunk on mint juleps on the tennis court,
The wealthy widow wanted more than sport.
The tennis pro thought it was inappropriate,
The wealthy widow thought that they should go for it.
She giggled, pickled, tanned as leather.
Sacks of sand in her cashmere sweater.
Oh Madame, the way you waste my time,
It's so divine.
Kissing the concrete you'd swear it was skin,
Her manicure secretes original sin.
Oh Madame, your taste for steak and wine serves to impress me.

You're so vain
You probably don't think this song is about you, Champagne Jane.

So many eager sinners, only 7 deadly sins;
Hell's so Goddamn crowded that there's no one getting in.
The line goes to the river Styx, but she can get you in.

It was work,
But the work was fun.
What will they say when they see what we done?
What will they say when they see what we do?
10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-
One of us has got to go.
One of us has got to cum.
Bury me in mistletoe.
Put a dollar on my tongue.

You're so vain.

Rally up my friends
And stand by my bedside,
If I die tonight
Put my head inside a mason jar.
Put it in the ocean
And send it out to sea.
I'm wading because...
And when I hit some shore,
And when my seal is broke,
I'll split my eyes and lips asking,
"Is this a judgment or a joke?"

This is a chance to dissect it.
This is a chance to make it up.
These are the words we've selected.

Don't believe my lies
Of an afterlife spent drifting;
After 40 hours
I sank straight to the bottom
Of the harbor near my home
And there I lay alone,
The spider crab
Is finely clad
Beneath my cloak of brain and bone.

In the basement of the dress shop,
They play poker on the weekends.
Old men trading laces,
It's an absolute disgrace.
They never gave a tip
To the boy who ran the route.
They never gave a shit
What the paper was about,
But when they heard he died
They read the news that day
Just so they could see
What his obituary would say.
It said:
"Rally up my friends
And stand by my bedside!
Rally up my friends
And stay with me tonight!"

All nerve endings shut down.
Stiff lipped at the countdown.
All systems are go,
All systems are gauche,
All systems are ghosts.

In a can,
In a cupboard,
In a submarine,
There's nothing left inside.
In a basket at the bottom of the guillotine
Is where the sailor died.
He never said a word
To the jury or the press
And when the ax-blade bit his neck,
"Set me free" is all he said.

In a pixel,
In a portrait,
In a T.V. screen
There's nothing left to hide.
Stitched each instant by the firing electron beam,
Let the camera man decide.
And he never said a word
To the jury or the press
When the on-air light turned red,
"Cut Away" is all he said.

When she opened it up,
She dropped her coffee cup,
And when the cup hit the ground
The whole damn house came stumbling down.
Good by my memory.
From this point on I'm unsettling.

In Brooklyn we stay home.

All nerve endings shut down.
Stiff lipped at the countdown.
All systems are go,
All systems are gauche,
All systems are ghosts.

In a can,
In a cupboard,
In a submarine,
There's nothing left inside.
In a basket at the bottom of the guillotine
Is where the sailor died.
He never said a word
To the jury or the press
And when the ax-blade bit his neck,
"Set me free" is all he said.

In a pixel,
In a portrait,
In a T.V. screen
There's nothing left to hide.
Stitched each instant by the firing electron beam,
Let the camera man decide.
And he never said a word
To the jury or the press
When the on-air light turned red,
"Cut Away" is all he said.

When she opened it up,
She dropped her coffee cup,
And when the cup hit the ground
The whole damn house came stumbling down.
Good by my memory.
From this point on I'm unsettling.

In Brooklyn we stay home.

Fav,
Les Savy Fav,
Les Savy Fav-
That's our name.

The first crack
Was invisible,
The next crack
Tears this thing apart.
The accident
Was at the rodeo.

We've got a problem at our camp,
We've got a problem with our math.
We want to figure something out,
We always have to write it down.

Gigantic spaces
Between the lines
Leave too much room to hypothesize-
If they ask us,
We'll have to blame our dads.

Cheerios like red blood cells.
My bowl is full.

The sweat descends.
The sweaty scents.
One cocksure fox
In a house of hens.
My mouth will water
Where the sweat descends.

The sweat descends.
Sweet decadence.
Let's hope this party
Never ends.
A shiv in the ribs,
Some smoke in the hive,
You live how you live,
I'll die how I die.

Wake me up when we get to heaven,
Let me sleep if we go to hell.
Blame my mouth if the house is burning,
Check my tongue if you still can't tell.

The sweat descends,
My psyche bends,
I'll never be
The same again.
The soul is twisted
But the skin will mend.
My tight young skin
Covers up a sick palimpsest.

Make your mark on a darkened dance floor.
Slip across the present tense,
Press up against the skin you care for,
Meet me where the sweat descends.

They say, "Once you've found love
And it's rarer than gold.
You stake your claim-
It's so hard to hold."
I say, "We've struck a vein
And it's wide as a road!"

Have we got love enough to go around?
Why don't you get a piece and pass it down?
Even 100,000,000 years from now
The love we make will still be
Putting out.

We filled up our pockets
Till they would explode
And called the whole world here
So they could behold
The light of our love
Beats the dark and the cold.

I get the best of you,
You get the best of me.
You know I come to you
Across the broadest sea.
For just a speck of you,
I'd trade the whole of me.
I wish each peck from you
Would last eternity.

Where the skin's thin
And where the skin gathers.
When you're moving in
And see it's all that matters.
Records left skipping,
Clothing all scattered,
A kiss in the kitchen,
The dishes all shattered.

We'll make a lover of you.

One was a piper.
One was a rat.
They couldn't decipher
How it came to that.
And at the cockadoodle
They crawled out of their beds.
As if the rooster knew
Each rising dawn they dread.
Lost in a flurry.
Looking for land mines
Hid in a ribcage
Back at the front line.
And when the sun is falling
They crawl out of their skins.
They hear the moonlight calling
Them from this mess they're in.

Take deep breaths and waste sweet seconds.
The late day beckons
And if you save it, it will slip away-
Spend 7 nights like Saturday.
Yawn, Yawn, Yawn,
We're all long gone.
If we get lucky we'll be dead by dawn.
So let's get it on.
I want to get it on!

Charging the windmill
And missing the mark.
Blinded by sunlight
But building an ark.
I've got 1,000,000 dollars
Made of 10,000,000 dimes
Paid for 1,000,000 failures
Of others' good advice.