What Happened To My Brother

What happened to my brother?
The life in his eyes?
Did something shake his brain
On that long bus ride?

What happened to my brother?
Swear he had my mother's face
What I'd give to find him
Hold him in a long embrace

What happened to his body?
Why's he look so white and empty?
When he shows up at my door
Just don't know him

Used to sit and talk for days
Now he lays there in a haze
Till some tiny little nothin'
Triggers psychotic eruption

What happens when he's sleepin'?
Why's he wake up cryin' and screamin'?
Walkin' into walls and runnin'
Like hungry animals are comin'

To gnaw his bones, lap up his blood
From a ditch bank in the mud
Leave his scarecrow in the sticks
For the black birds
And the blue jays to pick
For the nature to encroach
For the wanderers to approach
For the snow and autumn leaves
To be buried underneath
For the rivers to rise
Wash him out into the tides

What happened to my brother?
Used to have his pick of lovers
A whole array of pretty ones
My brother was a silver sun

A heavyweight, a head bull
A front-man, a waterfall
A stoic prince
Not the second
But the first violin

So forget the viola
So forget the cello
So forget the violin
He's up, he's up, he's up in his room
Gone solo

He used to dazzle us
Leave a trail of magic dust
At the end of every joke
We would laugh so hard we'd choke

He could turn over a stone
Find an endless well of poems
Used to bring the sweetest gifts
We went to him to be uplifted

For inspiration, friendship
We needed love, we needed tips
Oh, how I miss, how I miss
My brother, I miss

You ask me, what's he do?
He swallows reds, he swallows blues
Stares off in the night sky
You ask me, what's he do?

So forget the viola
So forget the cello
So forget the violin
He's up, he's up, he's up there
Layin' low