Like Blood Does

Nightly, empty, luminous ballrooms roll back in your skull I resigned myself to all the disappearance I was sure the cops would come calling Some sick shivering morning I live in Newark now where cars speed away And weekend freebasers bury their stems In shaded groves and muted clearings In Philadelphia, we didn't know Clammy hands and beaming thresholds And I'm visited by naked reality In the higher gloss of the cars that cut in front of me And depression is nothing compared to what's in store for them Having hitched across America Like an itinerant laborer Or a serial killer on pulsing arterials I numbly recline In a filthy slicked lawn chair As our garage yawns behind me with tunnels The pinkest sky I'd ever seen Still pocked with dirigibles And flying machines that opened up I thought it'd begun hailing but amethyst and glass Were raining down from an unmarked aircraft Covering the cooling tar totally In manufactured street sheen I've been finding clipped-off Parliaments everywhere lately I take it as a sign that you're around See Jane passed away For the first time in June And the last time last night in the Warren As a warm, round, mournful sound Flooded my room Like blood does from the faucets of pitch-black bathrooms during adolescent summoning rituals