So this is how it ends.
This is how we're going out.

Maybe not we.
Maybe just me.
Empty and alone,
Free at last, and far
away from
"home."

Free,
at last,
even though it's too late,
and we or maybe I have
long-since been 
institutionalized
by the prison
in my heart,
institutionalized by
the feeling of believing,
by all the love I had,
and threw away,
the love I lost
and died
for...

Gone.

And now it's just me
and the walls
I don't know how to live
without with.

They got me.

Institutionalized by desire,
many songs
written
on the faded,
weathered walls of the punk-rock
beatnik workout
yard,
words and melodies
I could never have come up with
in a world without
sin.

Or love.  Or sin,
whatever.

A world without institutions,
cathedrals of desire,
prison walls
pulsing
in my chest,
pumping blood and bums
through city
streets
pocked with junkie holes
and broken hearts
and bottles.

My heart was free,
but couldn't take it,
because what good is a heart
without love?

Institutionalized I
have been,
and now that I am
free,
and there's nothing left
to love
(at least not on this
earth),
there's no reason
not to leave.

This is my Joey year,
and I have been
released,
paroled from caring and believing,
but,
having spent so long 
in the prison of belief,
I find that I don't know how to
live without it.

Life on the outside is a hurricane without wind.

A frenzy without friends.

A blizzard of sparrows.

A sense of angry peace.

Stormclouds of horrifying calm gather 
above me, but never
strike.

The lightning can see that it would kill me

If it showed me what it could really do.

So love and music stand there
like an electric chair, or
maiden, or a
madman,
on the foamy beach of Heaven,
laughing at
me without malice,
while I lie on the sand
paralyzed,
or napping
in a state of convalescent
peace that,
I'm not gonna
lie, is
nice.

I'm not going to lie
and tell you that
it's joyful.

It isn't joyful.

In fact it hurts quite a lot.

I miss it.

Being locked inside the prison
of desire and belief
was one of the best things
that ever happened to me.

Even if I did manage
to finally break
out.

I'm not talking about women.
Women are not real.
Women are a metaphor.
A reflection of the wind.

Writing a love song is like
writing a song for
a ghost
in a language
that hasn't been
invented yet.

I lose exactly zero sleep
thinking about
women.

Women
were the barbells 
in the prison yard,
I had to lift
so they wouldn't come
crashing down on
my throat to
caress
& choke,
or murder me.

Who was the girl in Paris with whom
I laid in celibate torment
for the night?

The girl on the train to
Berlin,
who hated me
by the time we reached
Zoo Station,
because I wouldn't 
let me 
touch her?

My buddy's sister in New
York?

Barbells,
resistance,
repetitions, 
all.

That isn't what I miss.

You will say I'm misogynistic,
while giving me no
love at all, or
never 
once considering
that I'm speaking
metaphorically.

Metaphorically, ya
know.

Like I did in all those songs I rode about you.

Don't worry.

Soon enough your legalistic walls will burn,
and like I have broken free
from the chains of earthly
love,

You too will break out
of the prison in your
mind,
and we will be as
one.

So it's my Joey year
again,
but I'm not listening to Ramones,
even though we were the 
same age when we
broke free,
Joey
& me.

I'm listening to a lot of by-now
old-school U2,
like I used to in the old days,
back when it was new.

This is the hour, this is the hour, 
this is the hour, sigh
and weep.

In a little while,
this hurt will hurt no more.

I'll be home.

I will see you soon, again,
my friend.

The pain is overwhelming.

It's the best thing that ever happened to me.

Without it I'd be lost.