Lie the lie, I’ll lie the lie
Because it’s the one thing left to try
This hopeless April night
With trees like nerves against the sky
Tongue-tied, you just sigh
A bit too often
As you pace and pace around a scene
I’ve been trying to erase, and trace
A hardshell case, a borrowed bass, and my mic stand
That I sent you across the street to try to get back from the new band

They more than likely formed to spite me
But you asked them so politely
It seemed unsightly
So I waited, clinging tightly to the songs I was trying to save
That they claimed, but to my knowledge never cared to play again
And bitterly I’d say
That that’s what friends are for
But not anymore
I got tired, so I forgave

But still this ineffable pull from every kind of light and weather
Leaves my heart too full to drag it from the place it’s tethered
The only difference now is that I can keep a secret better
And lie the lie, lie the lie

I’ve relied on little lies
They padded out my whole reply
I’ve been revising half my life
I still haven’t got it right
What you implied, I don’t deny
But it’s never been as simple as you think
The walls are thin, so don’t begin
You’ll never know the places that your ghost has been
I’ll never know how much I forfeit
Or what I may someday regret

I cut the rope and kind of hope that you’ll forget me someday
God bless you if you don’t

I just try not to think too much on what I’ve pissed away,
Give no one grounds to say I’m breaking character at last
Relax. Some sirens never change
Nor stray beyond a narrow range of subjects
In these lonely jagged rock songs

I wish you’d sail around to hear
Stop by sometime and have a beer
I swear I’ll explain everything I don’t regret
At least not yet–maybe give me twenty years

But on a good night, you might imagine me to be
Penelope, unraveling and traveling just fast enough
To keep one step ahead of all the stupid shit I said

I hope that you remember
I hope you don’t remember
And that it doesn’t trouble you
How these things can take forever
In the meantime, I get sidelong visions
Not of what might have been,
But of things as I suspect they really are
This melancholy dream’s the only one I care to offer
Of a mostly empty restaurant where I met your wife and daughter
It was stilted and unpleasant, but the kid was well behaved
I hope she grows up just like me and gives you hell someday

But I’ve gone on
And against these premonitions
I’ve kept and scrapped,
Then reassembled beyond recognition
All the least important pieces
Of the story I loved more than you
Yet tried to let you in on
In its irrelevance, its lack of any real direction
It’s taken on a certain unexpected beauty
I know that if I tried to tell it over, though,
It would seem to you like getting called for jury duty

I guess I failed
I think that ship has sailed
I know you never will reply

But if you were here now
I’d tell you how the DuPage County courthouse rented a pair of swans
To ornament an artificial pond
But if I took you there to see them on the weekend, they’d be gone