Waste Of Paint

I have a friend, he's mostly made of pain
And he wakes up, drives to work and straight back home again
He once cut one of my nightmares out of paper
I thought it was beautiful, I put it on a record cover

And I tried to tell him that he had a sense
Of color and composition, so magnificent

And he said, "Thank you, please, but your flattery
It is truly not becoming me
Your eyes are poor, you're blind, you see
No beauty could have come from me
I'm a waste of breath, of space, of time"

I knew a woman, she was dignified and true
And her love for her man was one of her many virtues
Until one day she found out that he had lied
And she decided the rest of her life from that point on would be a lie

But she was grateful for everything that had happened
And she was anxious for all that would come next

But then she wept, "What did you expect
In that big old house with the cars you kept in?"
"Such is life", she often said, "With one day leading to the next
You get a little closer to your death"
Which was fine with her, she never got upset
And with all the days she may have left
She would never clean another mess
Or fold his shirts, or look her best
She was free to waste away alone

Last night my brother, he got drunk and drove
And this cop, he pulled him off to the side of the road
And he said, "Officer, officer, you've got the wrong man
No, no, I'm a student of medicine, a son of a banker, you don't understand"

The cop said, "No one got hurt, you should be thankful
And your carelessness, it is something awful"

"And no, I can't just let you go
And though your father's name is known
Your decisions now are yours alone
You're nothing but a stepping stone
On a path to debt, to loss, to shame"

The last few months I've been living with this couple
Yeah, you know, the kind who buy everything in doubles
Oh, they fit together like a puzzle
And I love their love and I am thankful

That someone actually receives the prize that was promised
By all those fairy tales that drugged us

And still do me, I'm sick, lonely
No laurel tree, just green envy
Will my number come up eventually?
Like love's some kind of lottery
Where you scratch and see what's underneath
It's sorry, just one cherry
I'll play again, get lucky

So I've been hangin' out down by the train's depot
No, I don't ride, I just sit and watch the people there
And they remind me of wind-up cars in motion
The way they spin and turn and jockey for positions

And I wanna scream out that it all is nonsense
Their life's one track and can't they see it's pointless?

But just then my knees give under me
My head feels weak and suddenly
It's clear to see, it's not them, but me
Who's lost my self-identity
As I hide behind these books I read
While scribbling my poetry
Like art could save a wretch like me
With some ideal ideology

That no one could hope to achieve
And I'm never real, it's just a sketch of me
And everything I've made is trite and cheap and a waste
Of paint, of tape, of time

So now I park my car down by the cathedral
Where the floodlights point up at the steeples
Choir practice is filling up with people
I hear the sound escaping as an echo
Sloping off the ceiling at an angle
When the voices blend, they sound like angels
I hope there's some room still in the middle

But when lift my voice up now to reach them
The range is too high, way up in heaven

And so I hold my tongue, forget the song
Tie my shoes, start walking off
And try to just keep moving on
With my broken heart and my absent God

And I have no faith but it's all I want
To be loved
And believe
In my soul, in my soul
In my soul, in my soul