Waste of Paint

I have a friend, he is made mostly of pain

And he wakes up, drives to work, and then straight back home again

He once cut one of my nightmares out of paper

Well, I thought it was beautiful, I put it on a record cover

And I tried to tell him he had a sense

Of color and composition so magnificent

And he said, "Thank you, please but your flattery

Is truly not becoming me, your eyes are poor

You are blind, you see, no beauty could have come from me

I am 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 happens

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 she kept

And "Such is life," she often said

With one day leading her 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 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 are nothing but a stepping stone

On a path to debt, to loss, to shame"

The last few months I have 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 they still do me, I'm sick, lonely

No laurel tree, just green envy

Will my number come up eventually?

Like love is some kind of lottery

Where you scratch and see what's underneath

It's 'sorry, just one cherry', 'play again', 'get lucky'

So I have been hanging out down by the trains 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 want to scream out that it all is nonsense

All your live's one track, can't they see it's pointless?

But then, my knees give under me

My head feels weak and suddenly it is clear to see

It is not them but me, who has 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 am never real, it is just a sketch in me

And everything I 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 was filling up with people

Could hear the sound escaping as an echo

Sloping off the ceiling at an angle

And when the voices blend they sound like angels

I hope there's some room still in the middle

But when I 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 shoe, 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 is all I want

To be loved and believe in my soul

In my soul, in my soul, in my soul