Banks

Milemarker twenty-seven says we're on the way to heaven
And I smile at the passenger seat
Forty miles from Chicago
There is snow on the windshield
And you're downtown dragging your feet

Now I'm circling the block around Union Central Station
And there are bullets flying into the car
It's the same as it's always been
It's the same as it's always been

200 miles from Chicago, there is blood on the windshield
And I'm reeling as you gather your things
I said I don't know what to do anymore as if I knew what to do before
I can fuck up almost anything

I don't think that I would exactly call it love
But it's dripping down my consciousness
As you're slipping down my lungs

I want to build you a protest out of sticks and rocks I find
In the backyard behind the house you grew up in
In loving memory of all our nonconformity
I want to sing you a signal that reaches only the ears
Of young disenfranchised straight white boys
Because that would feel normal and none of this does

I don't think that I would exactly call it love
But it's dripping down my consciousness
As you're slipping down my lungs
Save it for a rainy day and maybe then you'll see
I am like the earth, old man
There's no way around me

But even in my dreams I still don't know the difference between
What it is I want and what it is I need
I wanna see you be brave
I wanna see you surviving
I wanna see both of us
Prospering and thriving separately

I want the catharsis of knowing something bad's about to happen
But also knowing that I can't do anything about it
Because your new house just don't shine
Quite like the one you grew up in used to
I wanna come and visit
I wanna see this through, but
I never will because you're just not what I need
And I am just not what you want, though you're in everyone I meet and

We'll say fuck the banks but we'll still use them every day
And when we fight amongst ourselves
The banks will say, "Okay
Have you been spending all your capital on causes you deem just?
You keep doing what you can
And we'll keep doing what we must"
So despite what you have learned
In songs for which you'd take a bullet
You won't find objective truth
In a final rhyming couplet
A couplet, a couplet, a couplet