I said, “Elizabeth, I know

You can’t wait to get out of here

But I bet you’ll look back when you’re leaving”

We were the lone lights on the road

Drifting over county lines

A bottle at our feet

She said, “I know this place too well 

To lose myself

And I just wanna lose myself again”

And “we could die tonight

But there’s thousands yet ahead and I...

I can’t spend ‘em here”

And I said, 

“If you end up wrecking all alone 

So far from your name you can’t be found

And stranded like a cross on a gravel road

Who’d be the one to bring you flowers?

Who’d be the one to bring you flowers?”

I said, “Elizabeth, there is a grace

In dying in the very place

You were born”

In the dashboard glow

I swore I saw her eyes roll

Or stow away a tear

I said, “I know you way too well

You’ll never really lose yourself

I bet we never get to lose ourselves again”

She said “Your love is setting slow

Like concrete around my bones

I can’t end up here”

But if she ends up wrecking when she goes

So far from the home where she was bound

Stuck, standing like a cross on a gravel road

I will be the one to bring her flowers

I will be the one to bring her flowers

I will be the one to bring her flowers

Your sleeveless heart

Lights its fire every night

Kindling conviction with some lines

From books you’ve barely put a crease in

Out in the dark

We down the last of your father's gin

I say “you nihilist, you’ll know no consequence

Of needing nothing to believe in”

And you’re born again

You got a soul to sell

You’re so certain when it

Comes from someone else

Yeah, and you defend

Every single part

Scream until you mean it

From your sleeveless heart

I sleep till noon

And wake with smoke still in my skin

The embers cool

The revelations left me cold again

We’re desperate to believe

In ourselves or anything—anything at all

But now they just sound hollow like an empty cathedral hall:

The echoes of our voices screaming

And we’re born again

Got no souls to sell

When the sermons end

And we’re orphaned to ourselves

Nothing to defend

Nothing to impart

Nothing but the heat

Of our sleeveless hearts

(Hearts)

(Ahh)

(Ahh)

All the trees flail their skeleton hands

Warning us to double back

But we trudge through the boot prints

Strangers cut through this

And make it out in someone else’s tracks

Gentler weather held you together

But this rough stretch rends your seams

The sidewalks go jagged

And the highways fracture

It’s hard to stay and harder still to leave

Cold creeps in the cracks

The delicate can’t last

And the ice is gonna try to break us

The ice is gonna try to break us up

Yeah, the ice is gonna try to break us

The ice is gonna try to break us up

Seven months ago, you were invincible

And your misery took so little strength to conceal

But the winds found the weakness

At your collar and sleeves

In the promises you’re keeping

In your vow not to leave

So as you shatter to pieces

Fall into me

I could hold you all together till you heal

Cold creeps in the cracks

And it widens them and weakens everything

And the ice is gonna try to break us

The ice is gonna try to break us up

Yeah, the ice is gonna try to break us

The ice is gonna try to break us up

The ice is gonna try to break us (Everybody falls apart here)

The ice is gonna try to break us up (Everything just falls apart here)

Yeah, the ice is gonna try to break us (I was gonna try to heal ya)

The ice is gonna try to break us up (I was gonna try to heal ya)

The ninth drink delivers

The lines you've prewritten

And a voice like yours admits no wrong

I swirl the ice inside my glass

Drowning out the very last words

I should say

I guess that

Everybody’s got a trusty lie they tell

We fool ourselves with our own sleight of hand

Everybody’s got a trusty lie they tell to themselves

Keep it in your head

Careful now, don’t let it wriggle out

One sincere sentence

And six years is ended

Instead my voice sounds strange when I speak to you

How’d we wind up here?

Why do I stay?

Repeat it one last time: "It's just for one more day”

‘Cuz everybody’s got a trusty lie they tell

We fool ourselves with our own sleight of hand

Everybody’s got a trusty lie they keep to themselves

It sounds right your head

Careful now…

Oh!

If I met you here tonight

For the first time

I’d run the other way

Oh!

That’s a good one!

Everybody’s got a trusty lie they tell to themselves

It’s safe inside your head

So careful now…

Careful now…

Careful now…

Don’t let it…

Wriggle out

Do those sirens always blow?

Or did this time bomb finally explode?

They want you all in cities now

Herded on the coasts

The center cannot hold

And you’ll be armed with nothing but

Your conscience when it goes

If you make it out

You can stay with me

‘Cuz this ain’t the life I’ll leave you, no no

This ain’t the life I’ll leave you, no no

This ain’t the life I’ll leave you, no no

This ain’t the life I’ll leave

Mmm, no no no

Did those shotguns start at dawn?

I could’a slept through Stalingrad

I let the neighbors hunt the land

‘Cuz I know they’re all men of God

The cellar’s stocked for survival

And I’d spend my last days arming for

A war that I wont fight in

There’s a lot that they

Can take from me, yeah

But that ain’t the life I’ll leave you, no no

That ain’t the life I’ll leave you, no no

That ain’t the life I’ll leave you, no no

That ain’t the life I’ll leave

Mmm, no no no

You’re hardly here when you’re home

It’s like you’re living in retreat

Like you see some threat I don’t

But I’m not afraid for my own life

No…

I’m afraid for the life I’ll leave you

I’m afraid for the life I’ll leave you

Mmm, yes yes

‘Cuz you’ll be in your bunker too someday

Yeah, you’ll be in your bunker too someday

Oh yeah, you’ll be in your bunker too someday

Yeah yeah, you’ll be in your bunker too someday

Someday!

Someday!

I hear the drum

Of a desperate moth

Caught in the screen

And glass

The streetlights reach in

Through the curtain cloth

Stretching the shadows

Cast

We pick ourselves

From the city’s teeth

throw some worn-out record on

And each of our breaths

Is deafening

In the silence between

Each song

Honey, don’t

Love me please

I’m not the man

I thought i’d be

You say “Sometimes it’s like I’m a guest

‘In hell everything is fine’”

And the words are like stones

Through a hornet’s nest

“There’s worse things to lose

Than time”

Honey, don’t:

Love me please

I’m not the man

That I wanna be

Oh, and days burn down

A pile of ashes

On the ground

And seasons that we

Wait it out

Go passing in a breeze

Days burn down

And all the time you

Swore wont count

It passes in a

Breeze and now

It’s you and i alone

You say “I’d murder the fuckers

I’d wring all their god-damned throats

We’ll never find cover

But the demons aren’t yours alone”

No, no, no, no

No, no, no, mmm

So let ‘em out,

Let ‘em out on me

Let ‘em out”

Another night

In our pleasant hell

A swarm starts rising

From my chest

It's the 42nd parallel

But half of this bar

They talk like they're from somewhere else

With a fake southern drawl

It's like I turned the AM dial

Sliding through to get a beer

I'll stick around a little while

But I don't wanna be long here

They fly the rebel flag in Michigan

They're born with the right

Grandkids of militiamen

Bred for the fight

I hear these villains playing victim

Though they're falling on deaf ears

The same words sounded different

Back when I belonged here

Those same words sounded different

Back when I belonged here

I knew these men as kids

When I was like 'em myself

Righteous with an ignorance

Unknown to itself

But gravity took over

I saw a world beyond this sphere

If it'd pulled me closer

I still might belong here

Instead, I came back every Christmas

Bit my tongue till it bled

Felt my closest grow distant

As their blue blood went red

Felt 'em recognize a stranger

Too far gone to draw in near

Didn't notice I was changing

Till I didn't belong here

Didn't notice I was changing

Till I didn't belong here

Now, I'm drunk under the glimmer

Of a thousand more stars

And they'll go red as they grow dimmer

Till they're lost to the dark

I'll be restless in my searching

As heaven disappears

Man, I used to be so certain

Back when I belonged here

So here's to every nowhere village

To the dark-hidden stars

To the places god no longer visits

Or sends his regards

I left here for a reason

Way back then it wasn't clear

With some distance now I see it

I don't wanna belong here

With some distance now I see it

I don't wanna belong here

Let a light down through the clouds

I swore this storm would break by now

It billows and it drums

But nothing ever comes

And my heart is wearing out

Beaten like a cornered mouse

Hoping for a sign

A peace I just can’t find

What if nothing ever comes

And everything is never enough

To raise me from despair

The weight when nothing’s there?

But still I wait my turn

As if mercy might be earned

And weren’t some random pattern

In the sky

And still I sing this prayer

Though I know there’s nothing there

There’s a light I’ve felt

But every time it fell

My chin was tilted down

There must be something here…

There must be something here…

There must be something here…

Your uncle’s on his shit again

Four fingers of Midleton

Nursing all his lone regrets

Laughing off his eulogy

That all the fools he used to be

And all the men he might have been

Wound up him instead

What will you have when you’re looking back

Once what’s ahead is the distant past

And all of the life that you left to chance

Wastes away?

Wastes away?

Sipping something on the rocks

Spinning on a moonlit dock

Numb as an old bruise

I’m poring over everything

I got regrets ahead of me

But I’m wondering which ones I’ll choose

And which choose me instead

What will I have when I’m looking back?

Once what’s ahead is the distant past

The sum of a life that was left to chance

What will I have?

Man, I don’t know, but

I don’t want to waste away, no

I don’t want to waste away, no

I don’t want to waste away, no

I don’t want to waste away

To waste away anymore

Blue

Bleeds through the blinds

Another new year

The same old lang synes

Come…

Come…

I saved your birthday cards

“Your twenties,” you wrote

“Are gonna be hard”

But there’s empty fifths in your trash

And there’s questions that I’m

Too terrified to ask

Yeah…

Feel the harsh light

Of the red morning sun

You can wait your whole life

For an answer that won’t come

But if the chyrons start

I hope that you’re walking in a field,

Counting stars

None of this Hemingway crap

Just running the dog through the

Tall hissing grass

You could stock your shelter

Till the big one hits

How long do you figure an apocalypse is?

And what’ll you do till then?

Till the end time begins?

Till the end time begins?

Why’d you hunker

Down there on your own?

Fighting demons

Like they’re yours alone?

‘Cuz if you believe

There’s a shred of a chance

We’re not doomed

Stop saving

Your soul and

Put the damned thing to use

‘Cuz yes I promise I’m a lot like you

I’ve never been so sure of our certain doom

But what do we do till then?

Till the end time begins?

Till the end time begins?

(The lapping of waves—as the moon fingerpicks gently the morning lake water—mixes with indecipherable, ancient, whispered secrets about the true nature of the universe, time, being, etc., all suddenly grasped at last, albeit ephemerally)

So

Before we go

There’s something you ought to know

There are bones

In the shipwrecks below

Holding their dying pose

And they went

Clawing for breath

Clinging to hope that

They would make it

Out

Mmm

Out

And when

The panic sets in

And your body betrays you

Your screams won’t make a sound

You gotta kick like hell

And save yourself somehow

Knowing you’ll drown

Clinging to hope

That you might make it

Out

Out

Out

Ohh…

And if

You kick till you hit

Grab a handful of mud

To prove you made it

Down