Looking back is rough. What happened to time? Where did all those people go? Why must everyone end up on the bottom of the sea, floating alone through the halls of the Titanic? Don't tell me it's only natural. We have a super-nature to which death is anathema. I refuse to compromise.
Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt. To make the wounds unbearably painful, presumably. How horrible is time. So much beauty has been lost. I know why people stay in touch with dead & dying flames. They want someone to share the memories with.
All my memories are frozen into songs. There is nobody to share them with. All those stories, all that experience, shared with one other person I will never see again. The loss is immeasurably sad.
I usually fall in love. What's the point if you don't? The magic can't be found anywhere else. That's what all the songs are about. Any song that isn't a love song is dated on arrival. All love songs are timeless. The only songs that speak to multitudes of people are songs that were written for an audience of one.
The more you touch, the less you feel.
Someday I will tell the story behind this song, about the beautiful girl who inspired it. It is a wild, untameable love story of which no photographs exist. There were truckstops and unicorns, giant fishbowl tiki drinks, punk-rock and leopard print, midnight streaking through the park, rockabilly holidays, snowmobile crashes, graveyards, dive bars, alcohol. We loved each other very much.
Idaho (all the diamonds you can eat)
I left her back in Idaho
what she’s doin’ I don’t know
whatever it is, you know
she ain’t doin’ it for me
I think about her every day
from Chicago to L.A.
thank God that I’m in Phoenix
maybe now I’ll finally get a break
no I haven’t lost my mind
I just left most of it behind
and whatever’s missin’
baby I don’t need it anymore
I’m so far away from home
under clouds of Styrofoam
everything is made of sugar
but nothing is very sweet
and I am not complete
and I have got no time
but as long as I’m here
I think I’ll stay
as long as you’re laughing at me
as long as we’re both having fun
love your enemies
baby, drown ‘em in the seven seas
won’t you spend another night with me
down upon the kitchen floor?
if I should die before I melt
I’ll see you in the Bible belt
but we both know that it’s what you got
below the belt that counts
I wish I had a drink
I wish I had some weed
I wish I had a wife
I wish that I could read
take off your advice
baby name your price
laugh at my expense
sit up on my fence
you can spend all the money in your mind
on a cheap pair of rhinestone-studded shoes
baby’s got them high-heeled blues
lick yourself off the floor
kick yourself out the door
and cash your
very last paycheck in the sky
set fire to a swarm of bees
the insults grow on trees
but I’m so close to bliss,
there’s nothing left to understand
do you drink every night?
do you steal?
do you fight?
do you feel like a meal?
are you strapped to the wheel?
baby you look so fine
when you look me in the spine
you’re pretty
you’re cool
you’re petty
you’re cruel
and I never felt so clean yes it’s true
as I did when I was rollin’ in the mud with you
baby we got a wheelchair built for two
I got a mouthful of mud
and a bottle of Bud
I lost five pints of blood
in a game of five card stud
and I know you’re having fun
but wake yourself up my son
you know it’s time again
it’s time to feed the pigs
I don’t care if you’re the light
I don’t think that you’re so bright
I ain’t never comin’ back
I ain’t never comin’ back
I ain’t never comin’ back
I ain’t never comin’ back
I ain’t never comin’ back
put your money in my sack
all the tricks that you can treat
all the diamonds you can eat
all the drivers in your drunk
all the bottoms in your bunk
all the traps in your trail
all the buckets in your pail
all the stale in your mate
all the clean on your plate
and I’d rather wake up naked
in a bathtub full of snakes
than spend another minute living under
the cloud of your incredibly fascist way of life
my food is full of fleas
and I feel so at ease
when you call and when you throw
your broken dishes on the floor
and I feel so good
cuz I know you understood
when you walk away and point your broken finger at me
don’t point your broken finger at me
don’t point your broken finger at me
© 2004 Nathan Payne
