Live

Sandy has seen a tornado more times than she's seen the grateful dead...
She lives in oklahoma,
Where the storms come prairie fed,
And the numbers keep on mounting,
It's been twenty times and counting
That she's been in the path of
Splintered trees and twisted lead
That connect the dots between trailer parks
With destruction that's painted blood red

And now she wants to chase them,
With me, in my honda civic,
"we'll keep a safe distance."
I say, "give me an instance
Where 'safety' is mileage specific..."
Okemah is where the last one touched down,
(that's woody guthrie's old home town) and,
(as if it would turn me around)
She starts singing "this land is your land"
I say, "ok, you win.....terrific."

Now, i've never been to see something
That i wished wasn't even there,
Though i've heard that said of dentists,
And with in'laws, and from victims of the electric chair
But there i was, heading east on 44,
Getting pelted by hailstones the size of barn doors
So, of course, none of them were missing..
It was as if god was keeping score,
And the heavens were thundering their approval...
Thats when i suggested our hasty removal

Just a mile down the road, this rain of hailstones ceased
And a vaacuum of silence brought a turbulent peace....
The clouds started dancing, dressed up in taffeta green
And enveloped the sky in a jungle party theme--
There they gave birth to a barbed-wire wind
Sandy was frozen, her face had a maniacal grin,
A funnel cloud came roaring, cast down from the sky
Like the knife of the devil but twenty stories high!

Sandy broke from the car in a mad, desperation run
To touch her sole fixation, this wheel where death was spun,
And i could do but nothing, my heart came so undone
For the host of twenty tornadoes,
Who died with twenty-one...

I'm only seventeen, but i want much more than a small town girl should bargain for
More than standing in one place, waiting for the next james dean i live in a town that's
Gripped in the bible belt man, i bared my back and i took the welts i only pray to get out of here

Maybe someday i'll find out if the world is green

(chorus) there is nothing to do in this town at night but sit in my car and watch the streetlights
Or stare out the window at the pizza joint what's the point? i wish i could buy my ford a sail

Hey, hey, look at the wind blow

Now the life of the local beauty queen is tied to the captain of the baseball team
They got a baby on the way at least that's what the kids are saying and the wedding i'm told, well it must take place
To save both families from disgrace but the whole town knows you see, it ain't like she's not showing...

(chorus)

Tommy bates sits in his car and he waits for his girl down at lucky's diner
They're at the end of the loop and he's drinking soup while she puts on more eyeliner
I passed them once, and i'll pass them twice, and i'll pass them back again they bought an old range rover from the next town over
And their headlights are my friends, yeah, those headlights are my friends...

She comes to my bed like a whisper
Slips in the sheet like a ghost
Says to my ear "hey mister,
You need to take this girl to the coast

I need to kick my feet up in the ocean
Feel the taste of salt sea spray
Baby let's live in the moment
Cause it feels like life is taking the moment away

Let's seize the day, seize the day, seize the day"

In the kitchen in the morning
She poured coffee in my favorite cup
She's been dancing on the linoleum-- bare foot
The squeaking nearly woke me up

She put tom jones on the stereo
- now that i could do without
Ah, but who needs perfection?
I like the tension when there's room for doubt

I'm a one man line at the twenty-four hour store
I'm in a town that reminds me of my home town streets
I roamed the aisles a thousand miles from what i was looking for
A familiar face that would smile at me sweetly

(if you)
Take me down
To where i'm whole
Where everybody knows me
Deep as a soul can go
If you take me down
I gotta know
Did you really know me,
Deeply,
As a soul can go?


We'd drive up the canyon to watch the stars fall down
Watch them turn off the lights on the church down on second street
There's jack's old man, he's still the only cop in town
He's patrolling the sidewalk on the graveyard beat


And everybody needs a place to call home
A roof over head a bed for dreams of their own
I've never been so lonely as when i told you i was leaving
This time i'm really leaving

When he looked
Into a starry sky upon jupiter,
With it's cold moons
Making their weary rounds.

Did he know that the pope
Would claim that he ran with lucifer
And a prison cell
Would be where he'd lay his head down?

Was he wearing a thorny crown?
When he plotted the motion of planets,
Was mercury in retrograde?
But he found the truth when a lie was what was demanded.
When the judges asked him pointedly
He was a' trembling that day.

Chorus
Did galileo pray?
Did galileo pray?
Did galileo pray?
Did galileo pray?

And he said,
"tell ptolemy, tell copernicus,
That the sun is at the core of us
The church, the pope
Can't deny the milky way

And every flower that follows the sun,
Has known all along
What god had done
They whisper truth
As the seasons each give way.

Don't shoot the messenger,
The postman delivers truth today.
And truth will march in birmingham
It will block the tanks in tiananmen.
Put the judges on the witness stand
Let's see what they all say.

Chorus

In the heavens you'll see it
As god has conceived it.
Oh, believe it.
Oh, what have you got to do to believe?

Don't shoot the messenger,
When the postman brings you truth today.
Because truth will march in birmingham
It will block the tanks in tiananmen
Put the judges on the witness stand,
Let's see what they all say.

Chorus

Don't shoot the messenger, don't shoot the messenger

Leo's is the bar up in heaven
Where all the martyrs hang out
Gandhi staggers in with john lennon
They'll start a bar fight, no doubt

Chorus
When you lead, we follow
When you bleed, oh the masses feel your pain
Plant your seed, setting sunflowers
Growing inside our brains...

Now jesus don't need no introduction
He's got a famous old man
And a party for twelve, i see cobain, he's well
He's in the angels that fell,
A local touring bar band.

Chorus

Jfk, joan of arc
Sit in the corner, kissing in the dark
Marilyn monroe, jacques cousteau
Talk about the sharks they used to know...

Chorus

I judged the distance
To where you ran your hand through your hair
You were startled for an instant , you said,
"take me home," and i paid the fare.


And you laughed the laugh of the innocent
As the cab cut a path in the street
As the world swept by with it's violence
I thought of the shelter we'd find in the sheets

Becky's playing a piece by gershwin on her old piano
She's been playing since her childhood, "too long to recall..."
But the chords that fall from her fingertips, are the same
She played when she could barely sit still, back in `69,
When the keys made her hands look small

And she built her dream around symphonies and concertos
Around traveling the country, and playing the music halls
Four kids later the dreams been reduced to "what-if" scenarios
But hey, to never dream is to have never lived at all
Never lived at all

Dave's a corporate lawyer in the city of chicago
And for fifteen years, he's had his nose to the old grindstone
Poured his money in the bank to feed the beast called portfolio
Well, if time is money then success is a life alone

You can look out at the skyline for some forgiveness
When you invest in love, the same will be returned
He has prided himself on a lifetime of spoken directness
It took him forty years to hear the lesson learned
Has he never lived at all?
Never lived at all...

Never lived at all

The great american novel sits on top of peter's kitchen table
300 pages on a town he built inside of his head
He signs the cover page, uncorks the bottle with the dusty label
Pours his wife a glass, she says "baby, bring the bottle to bed"

At 6 am he's out fighting the cars on the freeway
And fighting his manuscript, has he written his own downfall?
But he'll embrace rejection, he'll kiss the seal of each envelope
Better to live in hope than to never have lived at all
To never live at all
Never live at all

I'm a pistol, a forty-five,
I just shot two men in this hot-house dive.

Now i'm smoking - burning hot barrel of metal.
Believe it or not, i was bought by this guy named ray,
A card carrying member of the nra,

But he left me out in his car one day,
And now the finger on my trigger hasn't seen it's sixteenth birthday.
Some things they never tell you when you're riding the assembly line.
Like who'll be the hands to hold you and what's their state of mind - -
Hey, i'm not much bigger than a pointed index finger.
So who am i to lay the blame?
I'm only here to cause some pain...

The sirens --
I can hear them, they're singing ...
They're singing my song,
"when the sun sets, i get upset --

Darkness fills me and i want to light up the world"...

Would you believe i've seen better days?
I starred in westerns and won rave reviews.
Now i sit on a shelf, tagged for judgment day.
I've got to change the jury's point of view.
You see, guns don't kill people, it's the bullets that do.
I said guns don't kill people, bullets do.
Yeah, the bullets do...

I'll respond to you in letters
Sorry so slow, sorry so few
In a nutshell, i'm much better
So far the complaints i hear are few

So how have you been? have you been to the races? did you take my mother --
Is your sister in braces? i wish i could've been there to see you through
Hey, are all those things you told me once still true?

Do you remember that time
It was cold in the park
You were running a race, i was there on a lark
Who would've thought that new york could be such a small town

Margaret is tired,
Let's let her get some sleep
Bored with these letters,
Let her count her sheep
So goodbye love, goodbye love...

I stepped into the room late last night
Because late is the time i keep
You were sleeping warm as coal
In a pocket of comfort and white sheets

But you don't startle anymore when i step into the room
Though the hour is later than midnight
And neither window can place a moon.

"i missed you," you say
And it sounds like a promise
When whispered half asleep
Your skin still damp with sweat
From thoughts your dreams refused to keep

I follow my memory to a switch on a light
"shut your eyes" my voice cut short
When darkness turns bright

"do you love me?" you say
But love is too familiar a word
For in this bed 10,000 times a phrase already heard
But, "yes, i love you" speaks my reply
Though i know i failed myself and you for not
Matching how i feel with words of higher wealth

I know its lonely in the world tonight
Because here is more than what's deserved
And the imbalance can't be summed in black and white
Cause "love's" too familiar a word.