Singing along to the radio

  Beautiful Delilah won't you lend me a couple of dollars so I can buy myself another cup of beer I know you're rich and lonesome say you'd like to take me home but just wait until the bar it starts to clear riding in your daddy's Volvo when the streets are wet and cold my bikes in your trunk there's a song on the radio but what will you do in five years when you've lived out all your wild years will it still be enough singing along to the radio Your sister's an accountant your brother has already got three kids I'm a cook in a kitchen and you're on birth control you'll watch as all your best friends move in with their boyfriends but when he's out of town she'll still call you on the phone maybe all you want is someone nice to go to the movies with Friday nights so you won't feel so all alone but I'd hang out with you for my whole life we'd make food by the stove's light and sing along to the radio There's one window well in my basement room you won't see the sun until afternoon over frosted glass that's piled up with snow but I've got three quilts my grandma left so all we'll need is our warm breath and patched up socks to keep away the cold you told your mom when you were nine that all you wanted was an easy life that you'd marry rich and never have to toil but at thirteen discovered Bikini Kill and ten years on you're listening still and singing along to the radio

Dance like it's our funeral

I'm tired of waiting and of hesitating I've got a lot of living to do before I die I've spent so much time feeling useless and shy so many hours feeling so sad and so fucked up but I know love of mine the world's a shitty place some time it'll break your hurt then spit into your eye but this fucked up medical system with its doctors is a prescription that's going to choke on the pills they're trying to force down your throat and we'll dance like it's our funeral when the world turns upside down take all these lonesome nights in these tragic times and we'll bury them a hundred feet down I could have a whiskey still or a hundred dollar bill could go shopping or could drink until I'm blind but have I ever told you honey I don't care that much for money all I need is enough to get me by I've been riding all around in this fucked up little town where the streetlights and the potholes can make me sigh we've got so much to love in this beautiful night that I'd rather watch this system burn than see you slowly fade away and we'll dance like it's our funeral when the world turns upside down take all these lonesome nights in these tragic times and we'll bury them a hundred feet down and
we'll dance like it's our funeral when the world turns upside down because nothing's wrong this time we can dance all night just don't go quietly into their good night

The Minnesota River goodbye

Moving up right along you made out with a fucking scenester it's not that it don't break my heart it's just that I'm not ready to forget everything we've planned maybe you forgot we were supposed to live together in a house with our dog and a garden in back I know you never forget Oh well I loved you truly oh the way I loved you like I had the weight of a glacier sitting on my chest that's the Minnesota River goodbye It was in the last six months that we were together we never kissed you said you don't feel like kissing anyone but you still loved me a lot or maybe it was my fault after I slept with your best friend less than a week after we broke up you don't owe nothing to anyone Maybe on a steamy road in the middle of summer our bikes will collide and all the pain we felt in these few years it will be gone maybe then I'll let you hug me and you'll buy me a forty and we'll sit beneath a tree and we'll have a good talk than again maybe not

Pigs Eye Parrant

In a shotgun shack with a swinging door beside a dirty haystack a little boy was born he saw the world through a smoke and a fog because beside his one good eye there was the eye of a hog when his mother passed away the preacher sold him as a slave they laid him down with a cross of chains upon a slave ship bound for the promised land
He said though I'm gone I shall return to watch these cities burn although I'm gone I will come back to see this whole world turn to ash
The sea did crash as the lightning roared as the main sail snapped the water poured in when the storm clouds cleared away upon the horizon skeleton ship with a skeleton black flag they tied the captain up on board and put the slavers to the sword said better think well on this choice you make to join us as equals or go to the bottom of the sea as slaves Meanwhile out east the landlords and saints taxed the small moonshiners and chased the squatters all away Pigs Eye went west and settled in a cave on the Mississippi where the waters ran dark and grey for whiskey and fur he'd trade and with the natives lived then married until the missionaries came they murdered the Indians and renamed Pigs Eye Saint Paul.

Goodbye wide open spaces

I locked the front door for the last time it seems like so much has been moving on just a quiet lone wind blowing down the highways towards the cities where the light's so bright you can't see the stars at night it's quiet here in the evening Main Street is drunk and black a sad country song playing while the waitress gives me a weird look from the back a tear falls to my plate
Goodbye red brake lights shine farewell dust rises into blue midnight skies a guitar in my hand pack on my back I hope to Christ that I never come back goodbye farewell my home
Freight train's always in the distance I hear it whistle long and slow but when I hear that steel rail rumbling it cuts me so deep I know my blood is in this soil there's such a thing as too much suffering in too wide open empty space but there's places everywhere just waiting and here I am an empty man in this empty land empty bottle in my hand I can't let go

Roger's song

Sometimes I think that Jesus made me for drinking beer and acting crazy I guess he knows the things that I do right we played our first show in Wisconsin Roger burned cigarettes through the stars in the flag outside the American Legion and the police followed us back to the Minnesota line
They said we better stop this way of living because in the end we're only going to wind up dead but they beat him with a bible until it broke him and left him shooting up on the lonesome Texas railroad tracks
Sixteen years old sent him to an exorcist he spoke in tongues so he parents would be proud of him but they called the cops and they locked him up the preacher spoke at Roger's funeral said that boy was never no good at all everyone in the crowd stood up and walked out

Don't leave a mark (when you go)

Wake me in the morning when you're leaving don't just leave a note on my pillow I know you never wear lipstick but I'd appreciate it if your lips left a mark when you go sitting on the front porch in the evening wind whistling in the trees it whines and blows take a drink of cheap whiskey and I hope you'll think of me and that taste in your mouth when you go
If you're lonesome Angeline put your hand in mine I hope we both understand that you've already got a man it's just for tonight Angeline
It's been so long since I even have felt lonesome just not too many folks I want to know but your southern breath sure seems to shake the leaves from the trees and melt the frost from the snow through your palm I can feel your heart beating don't worry though your man's not coming home and I promise to remember that my lips are not that tender and I won't leave a mark when I go

  Time and time again

When I called your house they told me you were at the mall buying clothes when you told me that you only shopped at thrift stores and then I see you in the evening you're all dressed up for a show and you don't even bother to say hello Time and time again you've been breaking my heart again night after night paranoid and crying again time and time again you're breaking my heart again line after line all you've been doing is lying There's a trail that leads down from the sink to your nose to the man in the greasy leather coat when there's no one left to buy from and you've been left all alone would you trade your last friend for that white lining of hope When a poor kid gets twenty years and charged with intent to be sold and a yuppie gets a ticket then paroled whether up your nose or through a vein haven't you ever been told that white lines will just blow away

Work will never set you free

I'm drunk by the time that I get home all this penny-pinching working life is eating up my soul work and pray but don't forget you're just a slave how come no one ever warned me that life was going to be this way Riding down a snowy road I've got a hundred cans of black label knocking around in my bones I locked my bike as my eyelids froze and how come all these car headlights make me feel so alone I go down to a fire on the banks of the river throw a rock into the Mississippi cold and silver there's got to be another choice for a better life than this working nine-to-five and drinking just to stay alive But no matter what they tell you work will never make you free we're wasting our whole lives harnessed to this horrible machine don't despair don't give up hold on to what you really need revolution starts in our daily lives with some of that good old anarch

y  Every greyhound station (smells like an ashtray)

I don't like people enough to hitchhike I don't like trains enough to hop tonight I've got a lonesome feeling if I ever grew up I probably would have learned to like you a lot it's almost past twelve on a Friday evening there's plastic vodka bottles on the stove there are some rodents over in the corner chewing I've got a one-way ticket but no place left to go
I thought I'd always love you
I walk the dog to your house in the moonlight I'm half drunk but the other half is on its way you brought me inside and gave me some coffee and laid my weary head right down next to your face some things can't be said sorry so you just try to learn and move on every greyhound station smells like an ashtray and like the smoke from that cigar the wind picks up and I'll be gone

  Every border is a tombstone

Well it's hard to understand but there's a million people buried underneath that hot sand with policemen in the sky and ranchers on the ground it's not just lines on a map but a thousand mile tombstone
Let me explain it this way that a border's the way that rich stake their claim chain us to the ground then work us to the bone it's not just lines on a map it's a thousand mile tombstone
They build up fences everywhere but the world was made a common treasury for everyone to share would you shoot your brother down if they handed you a gun or turn your rifle sites on the ones who hold you down

Teargas and whiskey

You said teargas and whiskey and heartbreak it made you old that no matter how hard you try you'll never take back all that dignity that they stole they've got you living like a lonesome river winds you're just keeping on without knowing why they've got you living like a lonesome river winds you wake up in the morning to the sounds of the birds in the trees you fall asleep in the evening to the sounds of the same old god-damned TV
These days you're riding alone in your '88 Delta Olds arguing with talk radio until your voice starts to go it's time you've given up on growing up and just got old
The sky's getting greyer and the wind is starting to blow but when spring comes and the ice melts then what will we find underneath all this snow they've got you living like a lonesome river winds you're just keeping on without knowing why they've got you living like a lonesome river winds

  Olive and green

Oh lord I'm weary it's like bricks weighing on my mind they gave me a suit of olive and green and they gave me the freedom to kill or die Way back in the Red River Valley the cornfields stretched long and wide by July under that clear and blue sky the corn stalks would stand as high as your knee Don't ask me no questions and I won't tell you no lies it's one long graveyard between here and between Baghdad where too many good decent people are dying They say it's just one battle in this age old holy war but I know that it's the same skies above us and across every nation it's the same wind that blows

Moon is on the river

Weekday nights it's six dollars for a cheap twelve-pack of beer he listens to Willie Nelson until he passes out lying back in that ragged chair weekend nights it's a bottle in the bathroom of a bar the pretty young faces you never could talk to playing pull-tabs at the bar
The moon is on the river while the lights are on the shore sitting back pulling memories from empty bottles on the floor
On the corner by the alley where they tore that old store down she'd walk down the sidewalk with her arms full of groceries where those boys all hung around it's that same wind that's blowing from the dry desert land to shake the leaves in these tall elm trees with the grain of blood specked sand On the porch are wrapped newspapers that ain't been opened up in days because even the mention of the war across the world could bring a tear to his eyes and a beer crate full of pictures under the table by the couch every time she got him in a photo booth she kissed him straight upon the mouth On the news they talk of freedom while politicians talk of love but when they speak about the price that's to be paid they'll always speak about someone else

ven in darkness (we're not alone) (For Jeff "Free" Luers)

I'm riding down on the River Road stars blink once in the sky and then they're gone while the good old Mississippi is spitting trash into the back yards of yuppie lofts but there's still something free in the space between this darkness and this dawn when it's reason enough for us to stay up because tonight we're not all alone sometimes I get drunk I say something dumb sometimes get drunk and we'll stay up all night long we can dim the sights on their surveillance lights with a stone and know even in darkness we're not alone At the Turf Club a hot summer night with the St. Paul scenesters and critics looking on but I swear I can hear a steel guitar and a lonesome wailing and weeping railroad song but there's still something free in the space between this darkness and this dawn when it's reason enough for us to stay up because tonight we're not all alone so take me in your arms and spin me because I'm sick of standing still when I want to hop and we can dim the sight of their surveillance lights with a stone and know even in darkness we're not alone Whether drinking beer or making love or writing 'off the pigs' on the precinct's wall they're the little ways to keep us sane while the war machine marches right along but there's still something  free in the space between this darkness and this dawn when it's reason enough for us to stay up because tonight we're not all alone someday we'll tie together all these loose ends and throw a little rope over the prison wall and we can dim the sight of their surveillance lights with a  stone and know even in darkness we're not alone When this night's gone and the light shines through the window we'll fade off like smoke when this night's gone and the light shines through the window we'll fade away like ghosts