Visions of Johanna

        A                           D                   E7              A
Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet?
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We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it
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And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin' you to defy it
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Lights flicker from the opposite loft
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In this room the heat pipes just cough
     D
The country music station plays soft
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But there's nothing, really nothing to turn off
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Just Louise and her lover so entwined
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And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind.


[Verse 2]

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In the empty lot where the ladies play blind man's bluff with the key chain
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And the allnight girls, they whisper of escapades out on the "D" train
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We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
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 Ask himself if it's him or them that's realy insane
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Louise, she's allright, she's just near
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She's delicate and seems like the mirror
              D
But she just makes it all too concice and too clear
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That Johanna's not here
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The ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face
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Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place.


[Verse 3]

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Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
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He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
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And when bringing her name up He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
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He's sure got a lotta gall
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to be so useless and all
      D
Muttering small talk at the wall
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  while I'm in the hall
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How can I explain? Oh, it's so hard to get on
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And these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the dawn.


[Verse 4]

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Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
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Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
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But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues You can tell by the way she smiles
         D                     A
See the primitive wallflower freeze
           D                    A
When the jellyfaced women all sneeze
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Hear the one with the mustache say, "Jeeze, I can't find my knees"
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Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
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But these visions of Johanna they make it all seem so cruel.


[Verse 5]

     A                          D                 E7        A
The peddler now speaks to the countess who's pretending to care for him

Sayin' "Name me someone that's not a parasite
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 and I'll go out and say a prayer for him." But like Louise
E
 always says, "Ya can't look at much, can ya man?" As she, herself, pre
A
-pares for him
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And Madonna, she still has not showed
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We see this empty cage now corrode
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Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
             D                    A
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
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He writes everything's been returned which was owed
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On the back of the fish truck that loads While my conscience explodes
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The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
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And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain.