Bright Eyes Follow

Waste Of Paint

Bright Eyes

I have a friend, he is mostly made of pain.

And he wakes up, drives to work,

and then straight back home again.

He once cut one of my nightmares out of paper.

I thought it was beautiful, I put it on a record cover.

And I tried to tell him he had a sense

of color and composition so magnificent.

And he said

"Thank you, please

but your flattery

is truly not

becoming me.

Your eyes are poor.

You're blind.

You see,

no beauty could have come from me.

I'm a waste

of breath,

of space,

of time."

I knew a woman, she was dignified and true.

And her love for her man was one of her many virtues.

Until one day, she found out that he had lied

and she decided the rest of her life from that point on would be a lie.

But she was grateful for everything that had happened.

And she was anxious for all that would come next.

But then she wept.

What did you expect?

In that big, old house

with the cars she kept.

"And such is life," she often said.

With one day leading

to the next,

you get a little closer to your death,

which was fine with her.

She never got upset

and with all the days she may have left,

she would never clean

another mess

or fold his shirts

or look her best.

She was free

to waste

away

alone.

Last night, my brother he got drunk and drove.

And this cop he pulled him off to the side of the road.

And he said, "Officer! Officer! You got the wrong man.

No, no, I'm a student of medicine, a son of a banker, you don't understand!"

The cop said, "No one got hurt, you should be thankful.

And your carelessness, it is something awful.

And no, I can't just let you go.

And though your father's name is known,

your decisions now are yours alone.

You are nothing but a stepping stone

on a path

to debt,

to loss,

to shame."

The last few months I have been living with this couple.

Yeah, you know, the kind who buy everything in doubles.

They fit together, like a puzzle.

And I love their love and I am thankful

that someone actually receives the prize that was promised

by all those fairy tales that drugged us.

And they still do me.

I'm sick, lonely,

no laurel tree,

just green envy.

Will my number come up eventually?

Like Love's some kind of lottery,

where you scratch and see

what's underneath.

It's "Sorry",

just one cherry,

or "Play Again."

Get lucky.

So I've been hanging out down by the train's depot.

No, I don't ride.

I just sit and watch the people there.

And they remind me of wind up cars in motion.

The way they spin and turn and jockey for positions.

And I want to scream out that it all is nonsense.

All your lives one track,

can't they see it's pointless?

But just then, my knees

give under me.

My head feels weak

and suddenly

it's clear to see

it's not them but me,

who has lost my self-identity.

As I hide behind

these books I read,

while scribbling

my poetry,

like art could save a wretch like me,

with some ideal ideology

that no one can hope to achieve.

And I am never real;

it is just a sketch in me.

And everything I made is trite

and cheap

and a waste

of paint,

of tape,

of time.

So now I park my car down by the cathedral,

where the floodlights point up at the steeples.

Choir practice was filling up with people.

I hear the sound escaping as an echo.

Sloping off the ceiling at an angle.

When the voices blend they sound like angels.

I hope there’s some room still in the middle.

But when I lift my voice up now to reach them.

The range is too high,

way up in heaven.

So I hold my tongue,

forget the song,

tie my shoe

start walking off.

And try to just keep moving on,

with my broken heart

and my absent God

and I have no faith

but it's all I want,

to be loved.

And believe,

in my soul.

In my soul.

In my soul.

In my soul.