Slow, Cold Drops

[Verse 1]
It's a slow fever, the sweat rises and recedes
As the weeks sprinkle onto sidewalks from the shredded calander balconies of new year's
I've been dreaming under the missing person wallpaper in federal waiting rooms;
And in the paper-cut windstorm outside
The faxed and photocopied faces of a twice lost race
Age of a black ink blur in a rained-on print-out
I wake up dumbly and stroll through the police line-up of my daily selves;
And in the body count of a new day:
Side-streets slept on, leaves black-bagged, a broken umbrella curled
As a dying insect, on a sidewalk slate-gray in the drying rain
And later, dodging a blocked-out penthouse
The sun over a flooded lot sets into itself

[Hook]
Here on my nine thousand some-odd opening night
On the closed-eye coma-wide walk-into-the-light tour;
Where names, they roll off like sheets of ice
And the slow, cold drops, they land around the four

[Verse 2]
He watched himself on a fifth generation dub
And through the hiss and dulled color cracks, became distrustful
Shutting it off just ahead of an old verse, stark and untrue
In the video blur of a night club in a twice-crossed America
Every tour begins in the collapsed veins of an old map
With the bonedust of a plan, but ends in a slow roll
With the skull of a Wyoming bull on the grill of a rented minivan
Three things:
Number one: you lose people in life
And often, leaving them where they stood, and still stand
Number two: you make songs on CDs, that come out and vanish
In the vacuum of money made and things piled, on shelves, and in memory
Number three: the unwordable weirdness of coming across your own name in a search engine
Like toe-stubbing your own tombstone at twenty-four
In a backlit blur of message boards in the visceral black of abstract space
I wonder if one ever bleeds into the others...
If they strain to catch the flown language of a younger Tim?
Every tour begins in the collapsed veins of an old map
With the bonedust of a plan, but ends in a slow roll
With the skull of a Wyoming bull on the grill of a rented minivan
Every girl, twenty-two, wants to move to California
But their last lines, over long distance, go:
"love to come, but i'm nailed to the set;
Fixed just so in a home crowd's head."
I've promised myself to never sand my fingerprints off
To impress the one i'm waving to
Instead, I'll do it to feel all new to done friends
Gone flames, and the bristled contours of my aging face
(my poor aging face)

[Verse 3]
An old friend with elbows akimbo in the two-handed camera catch
Of a thing otherwise loseable
And in the body count of a brand new day
You wake up and the world has wandered away
A vacuum of potholed parking lots in its place, through which you pace
And feel a part of you blur in the shaky tilt of the turned-away earth
Where names roll off like sheets off ice
And the slow, cold drops land around the four
It's the forensics of a city-life led:
You pointing at a flooded lot trying to explain what was once there
Over which, while you watch the sun set into itself (into itself)
Pinpricked by the slow, cold drops (cold drops) rolling off a corner awning
Slicking the roadside dead
Ticking off another name in the bent-light blur of a repeat sunset

[Hook]
A light dies in the loose change of an unled life;
Storm-chasers like us, we're on a black-out tour
Because the names roll off like sheets of ice
And the slow, cold drops, they land around the four
A light dies in the loose change of an unled life;
Storm-chasers like us, we're on a black-out tour
Because the names roll off like sheets of ice
And the slow, cold drops, they land around the four
A light dies in the loose change of an unled life;
Storm-chasers like us, we're on a black-out tour
Because the names roll off like sheets of ice
And the slow, cold drops, they land around the four
A light dies in the loose change of an unled life;
Storm-chasers like us, we're on a black-out tour
Because the names roll off like sheets of ice
And the slow, cold drops, they land around the four

[Outro]
Couldn't have said it better myself
Big shouts to Pedestrian for the lyrics
Out