From inside the confines of the story that everything would be alright, it was only so wide you could open your eyes, you could only let in so much light. You lay a hand across your eyes, every other part of you hurt. You lay in bed, the sun streamed through the blinds. And it kills me when I, you know it just kills me when I see some bird fly, it just kills me, and I don’t know why. But everywhere we go there is an outside, over all of these ceilings hangs a sky. Is it alright that I don’t wanna sing tonight? I know you are tired of seeing tears in my eyes. Was I not yet naked enough? Too quick to blush already I am too much. I confess I don’t wanna undress this feeling, I am not poet enough to express this peeling. But are there not good reasons to cry? I swear I’m alright - maybe you could just let it slide. Is it alright if I don’t wanna sing tonight? I know you are tired of seeing tears in my eyes. It felt intimate to watch it its small chest rising and falling, as it sang the same song, over and over again, over the traffic and the noise. Waiting outside the club in a parking lot, I watched some bird fly up and land on the rooftop, then up again into the sky, in and out of sight, flying down again to land on the pavement. And no it cannot be measured, I tried to tell you, would it kill you to believe in your pleasure? I tried to tell you. But I, I am not sure you remember so I try to tell you. You know you break what you treasure, I tried to tell you. I’ll feel as useless as a tree in a city park, standing as a symbol of what we have blown apart. But some days there might be nothing you encounter, to stand behind the fragile idea that anything matters. This is what the songs are for, this is the dirt beneath the floor I cannot sell you on your own need. I will not help you not to feel, to tell yourself it was not real, and only fools believe. That is the way that you want her, I tried to tell you, like the wind on the water. With blood on your hands from the river inside, you try to deny it, you never felt the tide of the moon pulling closer, I tried to tell you.
You were so afraid to try and pull apart the endless rain you thought of as your heart. That is the way that you want her, I tried to tell you. I watched her in your eyes, and move across your face like the wind on the water, I tried to tell you. And what could I say? It lived in you all day. It was getting late, you were afraid of yourself afraid that you might call her, that you could not help yourself. With a wine in my hand, laid back in the grass of some stranger’s field, while shearwaters reeled overhead, thinking I should get all this dying off my mind, I should really know better than to read the headlines, does it matter if I see? Or really, can I not just cover my eyes? In the half light, soft wind on my skin, pink clouds massing on the cliffs, thinking how can i touch this, how can i touch this softest petal, softest stem, softest leaf, bending, green, in my palm? Thinking I should get all this dying off of my mind, I should really know better than to read the headlines, does it matter if I see? Or really can I not just cover my eyes? Oh tell me, why can’t I just cover my eyes? My god, I thought, what a sunset blood red floods the Atlantic. Hold open the gates for the want of lust. Nobody taught me nothing was mine - if nothing was mine, taking was all there was, looting at dawn looting at dusk.
When I was young, I learned how to make love to the robber, to dance with the other, to wring from his hand the touch of a lover. Turn your gaze from the window’s light, turn your attention to this sharp knife. Make real imagination, make unreal that which can be taken. He had permission - permission by words, permission of thanks, permission of laws, permission of banks, white table cloth dinners, convention centres, it was all done real carefully. No, the robber don’t hate you, the robber don’t hate you. He never saw you, you were two halves of the same piece divided into two. The robber don’t hate you, you never believed in the robber but the robber never believed in you.
You thought a robber must hate you to wanna take from you. I never believed in the robber, no, I never believed in the robber. I figured everything he took was gone, nothing to do, nothing to be done. I never saw nobody climb over my fence, no black bag, no gloved hand.