Greg Freeman

Shot down in the shade of cardboard canyons
They cut the scene and saw blood on the Cameraman
She could see the frame but never the picture
A live round spun and a split second flicker
Broke the depth of field like the neck of the Hangman

You looked to me like a pie in the window pane
I looked back like a Mule in some Bridle Reins
Layin’ there naked through a Point and Shoot
If you got a secret, don’t keep it too close to-
Your chest
Just love me now and forget the rest

Does passion feel stupid when there’s nothing left of me?
You laughed and said, “yeah the crime of the century”
But I was lost like a little child
In a Wilderness where the West was way too Wild

And all I can say is
“I don’t mind”
Like the Silphium Branch to the black Bovine
She could see the frame but never the picture
A live round spun and a split second flicker broke-

Light spent your life wrapping all around you
And always finding your form
And now it drifts like some blind-drunk salesmen
Looking for you door to door

Your clock beat twice
But they sounded the same
One for every being here
And one closer to going away

Bent down at the bench of your body
I got confused by the view
Most-men live-and die by the same rules baby
But fate has made itself a story out of you

This life don’t quit
You know as well as me
And with one last look back at all the bullshit
You two-stepped to eternity

Walking through the parking lot looking at the ground
Picking up trash in the extraterrestrial part of this town
Feeling pretty good still, waiting for the Big one to be found
I looked all night for you and your gold and thorny crown

Standing by some lamp post I thought I saw you smile at me
You’re a crescent moon now but I know you girl-
I know your dark majority
Will drag the sky into the dirt but only for the hours in between
The time it takes for light to get from Rome to New York City

Morning comes too quickly now and evenings fall apart
And the pine box hills rattle at night with the stake-driven-hearts
And Heaven, like a ditch will sometimes spill into the street at night
And pacify the muffled dreams of the broken-into cars
And pacify the muffled dreams of the broken-into cars
Pass right by the broken dreams of the broken-into cars
Pass right by the broken dreams of the broken-into cars

The sun set in vain
Because it found us today feeling the same
Cold and closed to love

And one foot in the past
And one right in tomorrow’s grasp
Baby we’re just pissing on our gloves

You don’t know just how hard it is to watch
You go to sleep and your pain punches the clock

Maybe we’re both blue
Or even worse just two people who
Have too many yesterdays

The silence talks back at you
The window’s open just laughing at you
And the words bleed out on the page

Once you’re gone, there’s no way out
Like the cork stabbed into your wine bottle’s mouth

When I go away, you won’t hear a sound
Over all of the bridges burned in your hometown
It’s breaking me down
It’s breaking me down
You play a game only you can win
My key is bent your lock won’t open

And if this ain’t proof
Man is indiscreet
Why is heartache outside, doing pushups in the street

After one last round,
After one last round
You’re lookin’ to the sky for love
And all you get is a Gallic shrug

And if this ain’t proof
Man is indiscreet
Why is heartache outside, doing pushups in the street
After one last round,
After one last round

The bartender just shrugs you off
But I will love you until the cows come home

In the blue frozen morning
Of the Valentine’s Day Parade
Twenty striking firemen went walking
Out on the engine 85 brigade

After 3 weeks with no contract
That’s 3 weeks with no pay
I saw smoke out on the horizon
But heard no sirens go that way

In the outskirt wooden buildings
The winds only fed the flames
And 3 people died by the evening
And people looked for someone to blame

Sitting in the station barroom
We watched the news of that event
From what I’ve tasted of bitterness
3 dollars is rarely better spent

In the burned-over district
I guess some things were won
for some it’s something to remember
for most you don’t say nothin

And in the psychic-silo highways
Or the glacial lakes across your brain
A dusty brass door-knocker echoes
When you hear your lover’s name

There’s still a few lonesome places
With no patron saints assigned
but there’s Ethan Allen for the bedroom
And Joseph Smith for the mind

And when that final deal went down
The whole town walked out onto the ice
And for the first time that season
You could’ve walked clear to the other side
And for the first time that season
You could’ve walked clear to the other side

Some People read the rear view mirror
Some read the fuel gauge ticks
Some look into the lights for fun and drag on the stretch
And some sentences never stick

Are you living in the wastes of a widowed place
Or in the City’s strung out lights?
Are you there in the back, looking at me tonight

Between the Word and the totally absurd
Is a radio dial of Sin
But prayer is a piece of bread out on a hook
And your Disease don’t bite at those Hymns

And the Highways bright, when the Speeds just right
And its hitting like a million bucks tonight
I love the world, but I think it’s too fucked up to drive

Somewhere out in the Gulf Coast night
A wind blew
And the dead dog you dreamed about
Smiled at you
And into the Hieroglyphic Gulch
You Withdrew

And Broke Down in Texas
Near a One Horse Town
Where Brass Saddles Buckle
And Guitars, Guitars, Guitars Weep
But Some People Can Never Be Found

Your eyes are like a curtain and the sun goes through it
And a crystalline expression questions some kind of fall from grace
Reflecting green shadows through black shutter curls

Cruciform fossils lay excavated on your memory
Like plaster-casted lovers whose kiss became the only thing
That ever really mattered to a Vesuvian world

My thoughts die out slowly on the blood swept plains where I see you every night
And to the lonely hours, it’s like burning the furniture to keep the house bright at night

The night is getting late and the horns have all been blown
And the drummer’s looking cock-eyed on his rusty metal throne
And I’m somewhere in the distance and you’re somewhere at home

And I’m waiting for the money so I buy another drink
And like a pile of dirty dishes you carry yourself to the sink
Well the lake is out there freezing but it’s doubly alone

If your heart’s not in it, then your hearts not in it, then my hearts not in it
If your heart can’t take it, then my heart can’t take it, then my heart can’t take it
If your heart can’t take it, then your heart can’t take it, then your heart can’t take it

My thoughts die out slowly on the wind-swept panes where I see you every night
And to the lonely hours, it’s like burning the furniture to keep the house bright at night.

He was young when I came
And smoked like a Vestal flame
With one way mirrored eyes, his windows failed me

Now every time I see that sun go down
I feel the shadows of this town cut across me

Down in Rensselaer
Nothings’ quite clear
You might cross the plane
But “gone” can mean a lot of things

I might be wrong
But I saw the slow season coming on strong
Waiting for some company man to can me

And like a sponge for the gin
There grew a beard over every chin
From Jesses James to John fuckin’ Henry

All along the coast
Lie the mutinied ghosts
Of men recognizable only by the state of their hearts
You’ll break your own in time

You split, slicker than a sawmill
I saw you everywhere
One hand on a cigarette
And both knees to take you there

You’re gone, but loving you is real
So’s the moon, and skinny like roadkill
In the shadow of the silver spade
I want to die out on your shoulder-blades

You came, quiet in the morning
I let you in my room
Something in the moth is made up of fire
And something in me is made up of you

There’s a Wolf Pine by the river
That’s older than the rest
Designated by city fathers
To bear some kind of witness

There sent a little Boll Weevil
To deform the root
You grew up defined as
The reflection of your youth

And in June of 1816
A volcanic cloud’s black shadow
Reached New England via Asia
And dropped 3 feet of snow

Every cow silent in pasture
Every crop failed by degrees
As if in some hemisphere reversal
You can read it in its wooden memory
You can read it in its leaves

If you go back, deeper in that circumference
before you even were a dream
The Abenaki looked up, gulped and wondered
If they had the proper offerings

Go and count the purple rings of Saturn
Or of your ringed and wounded heart
But there ain’t no long division
That could ever keep these two things apart

It's not the dam
Built behind your eyelids
Despite the constant turning cheek
In the many stabbing swords of
Your patience
I saw you spring a leak

Right before the last wave took Vestris
Not a sound from the deck was heard
It's not the fault of the man who built it
When the captains overboard

In the predawn throes of Her sinking-
In the strange blue light of your eyes
Pitched a boat off the coast of Virginia
In a dim and loveless tide

And you swooned to the bottom
To seaweed and bone
And there you found me waiting for you
All wrecked on the stone

They blew out the dam
last night a wave a mile high
Washed out the towns
Iron ore and mudflow
Coffined the valley below

I woke up
Tried to shake away the dream
I watched the rain swallow the street
Out my window

I looked out
From the hearts ATC tower
I called to ground your crow winged shadow
Down below

You radioed across that ancient runway
Our love made known in its jeopardy
Clenched fists find God in rough
landings

And tonight it's gonna snow

You can believe in all your doubts
People talk shit, I dont know what about
You saw me clear in a seconds time-
I saw the Christ lookin’ out your eyelids
I don’t have the answers now
I got the mind, just laying around
But if i could do this life again, I swear
You would always find me standing right here

Long distance driver
Press me to your head
We can lose the miles
Somewhere in your bed

Late arriver
I dont care where you've been
I just want you to smile
Or at least pretend

You told me in the morning
about a dream you had last night
being lead by a soldier
through the gas station line

If this is the last year
Before things fall apart
Leave your name and number
And a credit card

I saw him in the subway
I looked twice through the glass
Shadows are convincing
But he’s never coming back

In negative #7
He was standing with a smoke
Just looking towards heaven
As if he knew the joke

Uncle was a gambler
With a butterfly tattoo
Somewhere down in florida
He did a favor For some dude

With a pistol in his glove box
It was open and shut
I met him the week he got out
At the wake of his son

Driving through Colorado
I thought of things
To boredom the weight of reality rings
Through highways and deserts
And cities and parks
And broke schools protected by the national guard
Most days i pass with my head in the dark
But today it seems so clear to me

Come and change my body
Come and take the dim white breath of my lungs
You can break me open I don’t really
care about anything else at all

See these bones entangled
What am I and what do I become
All at once there’s nothing in the middle
Holding up the sum

Come and trace my likeness
Mark my word with the black smeared touch from your work
As if in some contending form of progress,
As if some kind of war

Come and drink my heartache
Draw a knife across that scarlet seal
Take a sip, now break that cup you drank from
Underneath your heel

If I could see you at dawn
Black soot from the palms
Astreak on your fore
If I could be of use
Just once in a blue moon or more
Its not the weight of the world
Its just the soft-rot bow of the floor
Its just the weight of the world
Its just that i've been wrong before

Oh, you're tired too?
I ask myself this every day
I have no faith to give
Just a weak kind of toothlessness and space
If It's not the end of the world
Its must be it's falling into place
It's not the end of it all
It must be a strange kind of grace
It must be a strange kind of grace

It not the end of it all
It must be a strange kind of grace

You came as bird in a dream to my bed
Your talons sharp and wings dark and splintered
If you were born in fall
And never left that state
Then i was born in the middle of winter

In the grasp of your palms and your pale craning neck
Well, you looked like some kind of martyr
Is it the down that refines all the bones of your back
Or the pierced skin that makes you harder

I will sort through the stacks of the souvenirs hearts
I will work until my hands start to blister
Like a paper mache artifact i will not be afraid when my loneliness crumbles

Walking last night on the road to your house
I felt quiet and capable, my heart felt patient
In the cross cut wind, I thought I heard the funeral
train of thought leave the station.

Vermont is not like washington
theres space and cows and big green mountains
i hope one day i'll see you smiling
In the rear view mirror as you are
Driving away

Hey-I'll see you in the springtime
Hey- I'll see you in the summer
If i make good on time
I'll see you in my mind

I been thinking about contradiction
Between response and submission
That love is work if it us true
And yet sometimes the heart does not get to choose
Some people want what they resemble
Some people become what it is they want, or what they’re shown
Sometimes i think it's your far awayness
That keeps me chasing my own shadow

Hey-I’ll see you in the springtime
Hey- I’ll see you in the summer
If I make good on time
I'll see you in my mind

Start a shitty job today
Leave it in a second
Drink a couple beers out back
Looking for some severance

Get back on the dead horse
Ride until the morning comes
The hair of the sleeping dogs lie down
In the shadows of the red sun
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