Retrospective

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 the fever of the warm air through the screen
You come regular like seasons shadowing my dreams

The Mississippi's mighty, but it starts in Minnesota
At a place where you can walk across with five steps down
And that's just how you started like a pinprick to my heart
But at this point you rush right through me and I start to drown

There's not enough room in this world for my pain
Signals crossed 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 it gets whispered in a hush (don't tell a soul)

tell a soul)
When you kiss me like a lover and 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 would walk into the fingers of your fire willingly
Dance the edge of sanity I've never been this close
In love with your ghost
oooooh-oooooooh-ooooooh-oooooooooh
oooooh-oooooooh-ooooooh-oooooooooh

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
Oh 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
I burn up in your presence and I know now how it feels
To be weakened like Achilles with you always at my heels

This bitter pill to swallow is the silence that I keep
It 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

I sit two stories above the street
It's awful quiet here since love fell asleep
There's life down below me though the kids are walking home from school

So long ago when we were taught

Note: This song is a reincarnation of Problem Child

Through the dustbowl through the debt
Grandma was a suffragette
Blacklisted for her publication
Blacklisted for my generation
Go, go, go

Raise your hands, raise your hands high
Don't take a seat don't stand aside
This time don't assume anything
Just go, go, go

So feed the fire and fan the flame
I know the kids can stand the rain
I know the kids are still upsetters
Cause rock is cool but the struggle is better
I said go, go, go

Raise your hands, raise your hands high
Don't take a seat don't stand aside
This time don't assume anything
This time don't assume anything
I said go, go, go

The truth is I was afraid . . .
. . .I felt inferior. . .
. . .I felt I excelled in competing with others
And I knew instantly that these people
Were not competing at all, that they were acting in a
Strange, powerful trance of movement together.
And I was filled with longing to act
With them and with the fear that I could not.

Did they tell you it was set in stone
And that you would end up alone
Use your years to psych you out
You're too old to care, they're too young to count
Did they tell you you would come undone
If you tried to touch the sun
Undermine the underground
You're too old to care they're too young to count
I said go, go, go

Galileo's head was on the block

Thought I knew my mind like the back of my hand
The gold and the rainbow and nothing panned out as I planned
They say only milk and honey's gonna make your soul satisfied
I better learn how to swim cause the crossing is chilly and wide

Twisted guardrails on the highway broken glass on the cement
The ghost of someone's tragedy how recklessly my time has been spent
And they say that it's never too late but you don't, you don't get any younger
I better learn how to starve the emptiness and feed the hunger

Up on the watershed standing at the fork in the road
You can stand there and agonize till your agony's your heaviest load
You'll never fly as the crow flies get used to a country mile

while

And there's always retrospect to light a clearer path
Every five years or so I look back on my life and I have a good laugh
You start at the top, go full circle round catch a breeze take a spin
But ending up where I started again makes me want to stand still

Up on the watershed standing at the fork in the road
You can stand there and agonize till your agony's your heaviest load
You'll never fly as the crow flies get used to a country mile

while

Stepping on a crack breaking up and looking back
Every tree limb overhead just seems to sit anyway

I come to you with strange fire, I make an offering of love
The incense of my soul is burned by the fire in my blood
I come with a softer answer to the questions that lie in your path
I want to harbor you from the anger find a refuge from the wrath

This is a message, a message of love
Love that moves from the inside out
Love that never grows tired
I come to you with strange fire

Mercenaries of the shrine, now who are you to speak for God
With haughty eyes and lying tongues and hands that shed innocent blood
Now who delivered you to power to interpret cavalry
You gambled away our freedom to gain your own authority

Find another state of mind
Reach out grab hold
Strange fire burns with the motion of love

When you learn to love yourself, you will dissolve all the stones that are cast
You will learn to burn the icing sky, to melt the waxen mask
To have to hold of true relief this is the peace that's gonna take you higher
I come to you with my offering, I bring you strange fire

This is a message, a message of love
Love that moves from the inside out
Love that never grows tired
I come to you with strange fire

I come to you with strange fire

My friends they wash the windows they shine in the sun

we've done
I said, "let's put on some tunes, sing along, Doolittle all day"
Go down to the riverside take off our shoes and wash these sins away

The river said, "la la la shame on you"
River said, "la la la" it said "shame on you"

I go down to Chicano City Park cause it makes me feel so fine
And when the weeds go down you can see up close in the dead of the wintertime
But when the summer comes everything's in bloom and you wouldn't know it's there
And the white folks like to pretend it's not but they're music's in the air

You can hear 'em singing la la la shame on you
And you can feel 'em dancing la la la shame on you

My friend Tanner she says, "y'know me and Jesus we're of the same heart
The only thing that keeps us distant is that I keep fuckin' up"
Come on down to Chicano City Park and wash your blues away

them

And they say ooooh la la la la la la la la la shame on you
And they'll be dancing la la la they say shame on you
Shame on you

Let's go roadblock tripping in the middle of the night up in Gainesville town

step out
They say, "we're looking for illegal immigrants can we check your car?"
I said, "it's funny I think we were on the same boat back in 1694"

And I said ooooh la la la la la la la la shame on you
and they'll be dancing la la la they say shame on you
And I said ooooh la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la
La la la la la la i said shame on you
And I said, I said, shame on you
They'll be dancing la la la they said shame on you
Shame on you

Roadblock trippin' in the middle of the night in Gainesville town
(Blue lights flashing down the long dirt road)