Sam Brown - Division Street lyrics

No more sweat and no more grip Watch the rising bullet stick Fading faster than a knife In between the pale sunrise Life is short and willing tries To push me in a way that lies Whence wanton men, they pa**ed their lives In Spanish suits and cut the tides Of French Egyptian profligate men Surrounded in their fortress pin Pasting notice of their plan To reach the end of life, of men On the rooftops, they are chatting About the scene below The alley dogs in Division Street Have come to see the show While the madman, he is hiding Behind a pocket full of lies Buying his loneliness with a Gleam in his eyes He seems so slightly doubtful He is driven to his knees Is polishing up his spectacles So that he may finally see His friend, the one-eyed horseman Who can only pantomime Who lacks any sort of substance But offers thanks in which he chimes In a littered pilgrim smile He nods at him And thumbs his nose The medicine-bottle-black magician Screams then shouts his prose He wears his fine gray linen While looking like a stray “A whale” he said, “consumed me And then took me away And told me that of future earthly matters That really could not matter less, all Depend on the shape Of the planet, I guess” All along Division Street, soldiers sing While their mothers weep They shuffle in one by one Lining up like trampling sheep They took down all the posters Of the president's election Avoiding any instance Of considerable reflection The bells have rung the wedding The gypsy grabs your hand, and asks “which direction are you heading?” As they empty out their flasks The business men stake their claims As the horn blowers play The vendor sells concessions To street patrons who pay For endless entertainment At the price of none While begetting all formality Which in their minds they shun The fat men take their ice baths They curse their own two feet For being without rhythm They cannot keep a beat And below the organ grinder Is playing in the street As they inquire to see the owner So they can get the better seats They are drawing up their contracts Pushing the news through the wire Phoning influential intellectuals And posting up their fliers And outside The policeman show The horses neigh And the crowds bellow The street children play The spaniels bark Through muzzled nets While sings the lark And quietly the dancer Moans for him Filling her gla** to the tip With dry vermouth that she brings to sip With fingertips to vermillion lips Then she came and s**ered in The bastion-lying simpleton Who raised his eye when she was gone And destroyed his tongue by giving in Now his soul is plowed, halo undone Looking for the only one Sunlight shone in through his teeth His fingers broke, he filled with grief Quickly trembled into a fix Of shaken, broken pick-up sticks Now, you can hardly recognize his face He sleeps in back pockets of empty space In constant memory of a mermaid who Chased him down a rabbit hole Where he found statues of Gla** elephants and seashell shoals He found her naked in the mirror He took her for her every word While she left him in the hanger Left him singing like the bird My teeth are growing gritty My tongue is full of dust My piranha hands are melting My Bedouin feet smell of musk My lambast, my tears, my echoes My hungry-tired talk My nerve-ridden laughter My feet can hardly walk I ran into Saint Augustine He made me feel it in my bones Fed me in the church Followed me where I was thrown He said, “Boy I'd do anything to not wind up in a World like this” “don't you know there's no good or bad? Everything simply exists.” Always had I forgotten I was lost, mistook, and gone I never quite understood Whose side I was on He says, “Life is quite, like that,” you know “It's often unafraid To make you feel so una**ured And in the end so n'ave.” I found what you had left behind Took my head for a cure Found them in the back of the street And gave them every word The word is often hidden Is left inside of books But if you leave it up to me I'll tell you where to look Division Street is ruined Is stocked full of unhonest men Corrupted by the crooks And chiefs; the captains Of our crimes The clowns hound you for your gifts They make you give up all your toys And don't decide on leaving ‘til They've stripped you of all joys Seventy-seven angry men laugh At the poet in the streets The organ grinder Makes a joke About how bad he's beat Everything that's broken Every forgotten knave Is never realized And gone from people on the page I could not care less for anyone Who is not on my side I've bargained with a thousand men Seen a man tell lies I've lost out on everything By which you've lived your life And mostly I am sickened by This side of paradise I am not a prophet I do not claim to know Anything about Division Street That you didn't already know But I have grown so tired Left feeling so very gamed So left behind on everyone And in the end a name In the end of everything All I've ever felt is used But Division Street is calling me I've missed its rag-waif blues