signs with carved warnings fill the spaces
in the hills, surrounding portraits of the past,

and the excuses i played

one day i got angry so i wrote them all down
and filled a notebook
with the pieces of the mess i'd made

spearfish in the spring, it's just like climbing
everything, it's just like rusty silver rings
and black gold shaped like blades

i like liquor too, and i like street names
and tattoo flames, i need people,

i hate pennies, sometimes i can't behave



she left the old book in new york

the pages were bent and words didn't work

and she couldn't argue with that

then she stripped down to the skin

just to see what it felt like to say that she'd sinned

now she's talking in her sleep

and this blank page goes out to you



her name was sasha, yeah, or was it now,
she's not allowed a language with to share
just rooms, cut cold from her mind

this happened and then that, was it paris,
was it painful, was it london,
was it laughing, places bound in exile

walking down the streets,
how all the days just turn to drink
s
and all the spaces seem to shrink
until the morning reclines

this tiny room, it scares her
and it dares her to be lovely

and to tear herself from living,
"ain't it quite like old times?"



i left the old book in new york

the words were a blur and the pages were torn

and i couldn't argue with that

then i slipped down to berlin

just to see what it felt like to say that i'd been

now i'm talking in my sleep

and this blank page goes out to me



60 years later, in the sequel it was safer,
so she said...



what did you tell your friends

did you say you were pretending

did you think you were so wounded

your tail clipped, your ego spoon-fed
by the girl
you thought you'd broken

did you say she was a token

of the lie that got you moping

feeding lines you wrote with your pen

did it cross your mind that maybe

she lied too when she was waking up

to red wine in a hotel cup

and messes she could not clean up

she didn't mean a thing to you

but hey, she never wanted to

don't take the credit you're not due

cause we all knew full well it wasn't true



and i didn't know her, but i saw the pages
where they broke her down

on paper it played out
like stories cut from the vine

in the plane, these words are falling
from mountains, so i grab ahold

and i never, ever want to get off this ride

we both spend too much time putting
out fires, but if we just let them burn,
then maybe, yeah maybe,

we'd have something to keep

today i stood propped up on a wooden fence
over a country years and volumes
in between the places she and i sleep