Waste Of Paint

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I have a friend, he's mostly made of pain
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He wakes up, drives to work and straight back home again
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He once cut one of my nightmares out of paper
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I thought it was beautiful, I put it on a record cover
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And I tried to tell him that he had a sense
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Of color and composition so magnificent

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And he said thank you, please, but your flattery
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It is truly not becoming me
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Your eyes are poor, you're blind, you see
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No beauty ever could have come from me
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I'm a waste
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Of breath,
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 of space,
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of time

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I knew a woman, she was dignified and true
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Her love for her man was one of her many virtues
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Until one day she found out that he had lied
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And decided the rest of her life from that point on would be a lie
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She was grateful for everything that had happened
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And she was anxious for all that would come next
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But then she wept, what did you expect?
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In that big old house with the car she kept
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And, "Such is life," she often said
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With one day leading to the next
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You get a little closer to your death
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Which was fine with her, she never got upset
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And with all the days she may have left
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She would never clean another mess
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Or fold his shirts or look her best
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She was free
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To waste
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away
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alone
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Last night my brother he got drunk and drove
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And this cop pulled him off to the side of the road
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And he said, "Officer, officer, you've got the wrong man
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No, no, I'm a student of medicine, a son of a banker, you don't understand"
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The cop said, "No one got hurt, you should be thankful
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Your carelessness, it is truly something awful
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And no, I can't just let you go
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even though your father's name is known
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Your decisions now are yours alone
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You're nothing but a stepping stone
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On a path
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To debt,
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 to loss
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to shame

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The last few months I've been living with this couple
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Yeah, you know the kind who buy everything in doubles
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Yeah, they fit together like a puzzle

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I love their love, and I am thankful
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That someone actually received the prize that was promised
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By all those fairy tales that drugged us
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And still do me, I'm sick, lonely
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No laurel tree, just green envy
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Will my number come up eventually?
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Like love's some kind of lottery
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Where you scratch and see what's underneath
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It's sorry,
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just one cherry
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I'll play again

    C      F
get lucky

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So now I hang out down by the train's depot
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No, I don't ride, I just sit and watch the people there
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They remind me of windup cars in motion
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The way they spin and turn and jockey (or jerk each other off) for positions
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And I want to scream out that it all is nonsense
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And their life's one track and can't they see it's pointless?
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But just then my knees give under me
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My head feels weak and suddenly
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It's clear to see it's not them but me
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Who's lost my self-identity
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And I hide behind these books I read
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While scribbling my poetry
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Like art could save a wretch like me
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With some ideal ideology
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That no one could hope to achieve
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And I'm never real, it's just a sketch of me
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And everything I've made is trite and cheap
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And a waste
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Of paint
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of tape
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of time

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C    F

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So I park my car down by the cathedral
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Where the floodlights point up at the steeples
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Choir practice is filling up with people
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I hear the sound escaping as an echo
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Sloping off the ceiling at an angle
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When the voices blend they sound like angels
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I hope there's some room still in the middle

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But when I lift my voice up now to reach them
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The range is too high way up in heaven
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So I hold my tongue, forget the song
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Tie my shoes, start walking off
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And try to just keep moving on
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With my broken heart and my absent God
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And I have no faith and it's all I want
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to be loved,
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and to love
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and believe
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In my soul
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in my sooooooo oh oh ooooh  oh oh  ooooul

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in my sooooooo oh oh ooooh  oh oh  ooooul