1.There Is No Justice Now

I don’t remember if it was a dream
Or if it was something I read
Either one coulda done the trick
Either one of ‘em can raise the dead
You are different, now, to me
By memory and patina
Than when I used to lie in wait
To serve you your subpoena

There is no justice now There is no justice now
There is no justice anymore That mercy will allow

You said these things, these little words
That ring in me like chimes
In my mind, I’m by the fireplace
And you’re still reciting rhymes
A paper bag of drunken slurs
Slip from form into ashes
And figure skaters triple lutz
And no one ever crashes

I won’t lie, I won’t pretend that you were like a saint
Except to say that sainthood’s more than self-imposed restraint
So ring the bell, and let ‘em know A man is just a man
Come one, come all, the gates are wide They’re striking up the band

2.Oh, Baby, Something New

I found you out diggin in The Field of Sacrifice
Just out past the end of the boulevard of Virtue & Vice
Vice on the left side of the street, Virtue on the right
And you in the garden with the moon up high in the innocent night
I don’t have to do things by committee or boards
But if you ever knew how selfish I can be, you’d want
To put some regulations on me
Oh baby Oh darling
I don’t want to go down to the store to just get something fun
But Oh baby Oh darling
If we stay here one more minute I might come undone
Stay here one more minute and I’m gonna come undone
I’m up against it with bank’s collapse and the credit freeze
Lately, I even been incapable of feeling the slightest breeze
I can spot a slight from a mile away, but the breeze is lost
The baby’s sleeping sweetly in cradle but all I feel’s the frost
Lately it’s hard to swallow, and lately it’s hard to spit
I never loved the city but I dream I have
But I’d like the dream to happen while I feed the calves
Maybe we should move out where Things are much more still
I think
We will
Maybe we should throw away
Monopoly and clue
Why don’t We do that

3.No Reason To Leave

They were gathered round and pointing
At the stars up in the sky
They were telling me the meaning
And I was failing to see why
Why should distant twinkling mean
That things were soon to change
The porch light flickers warmly
And the dinner’s on the range
And I was hard to persuade
I was sure I should have stayed
They had to push me on my way you know
And somehow I could not really see
Cause I had a real good reason to go
But no reason to leave
The thunder never rattled at me
Lightning never struckI never heard a word that shook me
I never felt too stuck
But sometimes when the doorbell rings
And there’s nobody thereYou hear your own heart reaching out
Into the evening air
I had been hard to persuade
I was sure I should have stayed
They had to push me on my way you know
Somehow I could not really see
Cause I had a real good reason to go
But no reason to leave
No reason to leave
I had been hard to persuade
I was sure I should have stayed
They were gathered round and pointing
At the stars up in the sky

4.Moving Again

Pack up the bedsheets
Roll up the rugs
Gather the paper
For glasses and mugs
Or throw it away you
Won’t regret what you lack
If you take too much
You wind up flat on your back
We’re moving again
We’re moving again
Talk to the highway
It’s been your best friend
But all it can answer is you know
We’re moving again
All of those words that
You heard back at school
Each one is useless when
You try to be cool
Throw out the baby
When the bathwater’s gray
Walk til you’re sure the
Crying’s all gone away
Somewhere in some dining room
A family sits to eat
Somewhere on some well known corner
Two old friends will meet
Right where they live

6.Truth of the Matter

The station’s investigation was covered in curious circumstances
The criminal was liminal and like a beige rage of disappearing glances
The elected detectivereceived handsome advances
And a king’s ransom of lancescouldn’t out-joust his dances
Cause they put in the fix upstream
All the mean men who run the machine
And the bacon they’re makin’ is not getting lean
But before they learn how to make it any fatter
I’m just trying to get to the truth of the matter
I thought maybe the savior could speak to the weak who were born in a corner and curled
Up like a snake but they rattled so fakers and tattles with manners and banners unfurled
Brought in witches and bitches with twitchedy pitches and outrageous riches were hurled
At the liars and spires that come over wires who say that they speak to the world
Cause they put in the fix upstream
Those impossible ostriches set up the scheme
And they prance and they strut and they preen
But before I go deaf from the incessant chatter
I’m just trying to get to the truth of the matter
Now the person who worsens has often been softened
By language that mangles the angle
Of the thing that they bring with a whack and sting
To the gang who will hang and then dangle
Executioners giggle; the guilty just wiggle
Like marionettes on a string
Lifeless and likely to stifle the knightly
Who would far rather blather than sing
Cause they put in the fix upstream
Theology perfectly built to blaspheme
They’re all drunk on a drum full of whipping cream
But if you hit reality, it never shatters
So I’m just trying to get to the truth of the matter
Cause they put in the fix upstream
The committees in line to define the obscene
Get you guilty for life before you hit your teens
But if you hit reality, it never shatters
So I’m just trying to get to the truth of the matter

7.You Gotta Let It Go

There is a book of songs I lost
When the door was left ajar
At a San Jose hotelIn an Isuzu rental car
I went down to the train tracks
To try to find it thereI dug through piles of trash
But it wasn’t anywhere
You gotta let it go sometimes
You gotta let it go sometimes
When there’s nothing you can do
About the things you cannot find
One of those songs was something about
Swimming in a lake toward the sun
One ripple rolls away, it said
And then another one comes
I always wished I could find it again I imagined how I’d feel
When that song came walking home
But here’s the deal
Sometimes goodbye
Can be a beautiful word to say
Sometimes goodbye is
The rolling hills
That tumble toward
The mountain where
The highway threads
A pass that leads
To the other side

8.Fight Our Way Through

And the young, solitary puppeteer
Did not know
How to get the children to laugh and so
He had to ply his trade on the outskirts of town
Where he met an old, sad widower who could see
The beauty of the young man’s plays and so
He told him he should go where the
People were grieving and sad
We will have to just fight our way through from this point on I suppose
When the two went out together the
Old man found audiences who would weep
And so they two agreed to go on a while as a pair
After years of fruitful traveling that young man
Came upon the old man in bed with a girl
Whom he had seen just earlier at that afternoon’s show
That’s when the country went to war
The puppeteer went; the old man didn’t see him anymore
The girl from the show found someone younger
The old man rehearsed his blunder
In his mind in the dark
And wanted things to change

9.The Biggest Thing I Ever Did

Biggest thing I ever did was tell you what I thought of you
Without the hesitations and Apologies, I said it true
I should have known, I said
And I mean known it like a drug dog knows
Like doing simple mathematics
You put the answer where the answer goes
I should have let the training just
Guide me to a simple choice
To stay the hell away from you
And when you failed, then rejoice
But that’s not how I played it, no
I showed affection like a birthday gift I gave you everything I had
I gave you such a crucial lift
I skipped a rock with all my might
To find out what the skipping brings
You seemed to float but then you sank;
Outrageous arrows, fortune slings.
Biggest thing I ever did
Ever since I was a kid
I mean the biggest thing I ever did
Ever since I was a kidWas to tell it like it is
Yeah to tell it like it is
I lied. The biggest thing I’ve done
Was move toward your fireplace
Where you, unconsciously were hidden
In the flickering on your face
And though it’s hard to navigate
The stumbling and the easy sweat
I still believe I did this right
And yet there’s one thing I regret
That the biggest thing I ever did
Ever since I was a kid
I mean the biggest thing I ever did
Ever since I was a kid
Was to tell it like it is
Yeah to tell it like it is
I should have known, I once had said,
And I meant known that you would fail me
But since then I’ve discovered how
To fail others equally
And now I wish I would have said
I might be mad but I don’t want you dead
And if it please the court I think I know
What I would like to have the record show
That I always loved you anyways
That I always loved you anyways
Biggest thing I ever did
Ever since I was a kid
I mean the biggest thing I ever did
Ever since I was a kid
Was to tell it like it is
Yeah to tell it like it is