Seconds To Morning

It's getting late, and you're cold,
Winding down like a tin ballerina
Getting lonely, getting old
Even though you're still a baby,
Still a child, expected to be maddening and wild,
Scribbling in your whole universe in crayons,
Or maybe if you're a little older, black leather and chrome
Guitars and fast cars and all the shiny loud trappings of space
Between boys and men, again
How many times will you learn it by rote:
The heart that was broken
The mind still mistaken
The soul that's so modern it's fucking medieval,
It's brilliant, it's shining like a Fender guitar, brand new,
Your manhood distilled into strings and an amplified soul
Isn't it cool?

Cool, cool fucking freezing,
You're an absolute fucking iceberg,
And your fingers are falling off while you type,
While you beat your torturous prose out on a dirty keyboard
As if filth automatically lends you credibility,
'Cause you're a modern day Rimbaud, aren't you,
Clean little white boy in the suburban jungle darkness
Wandering the asphalt deserts of California with a picture of
Humphrey Bogart in your pocket, rock star, movie star dreams,
Fuck you, I'm going to Hollywood, you say, I'm going away
Far away, every day of your life could be better, you could be famous,
So fucking famous, a voice in the darkness, a light, a light, oh my God
Somebody bring me a light he's gone dark, my poor little boy
Did you see what it was that hit you, no, you didn't,
Oh my God, doctor he's bleeding, he's bleeding, he's dying
He's bleeding all his dreams out from between his legs and out his eyes
His poor little baby blue eyes are bleeding all over my dress, bleeding...

Bleeding colours out onto the carpet,
Salvador Dali paints himself all over the walls, and he can't breathe
For the brightness and closeness of his own fucking grasshoppers
Get me another drink, I can't see yet, Maggie, it hasn't clicked,
There's a click that happens in my head, and then I stop drinking,
But no click yet Maggie, not yet. Not yet, Maggie.
Maggie, Maggie, Maggie the cat, get the fuck off my roof, you're making a mess
Dripping pathos and Southern Comfort into my gutters,
And get Faulkner out of my freezer, his sentences are crowding out the food
I need that there, it's all that's left in the house so get your fucking Southern authors out
Out of my house, get the South out of my house, the South is in my house it's in my blood
Slave-owners and drunks and ne'er-do-wells, they all came together to make me so I could
Hundreds of years later bawl up to Maggie the cat, howling at her to get the fuck off my
Fucking roof and go home.

Home, blue house in Berkeley full of dark wood
And phonographs, but it's gone, it's gone,
New houses now, clean, sterile, pretty as the pure white of my scars
And I could always reach the counters, always, I was never reaching
Just there, doomed to my new adult size, never looking back at my crayons,
Instead I've got a Fender guitar, jet black and loud, shiny, Freudian
Phallic object, since I've got nothing else, nothing else but my shiny guitar,
And I'll be a fucking Humphrey-Bogart-rock-star god, I will become God,
And blast Maggie the fucking cat off my roof, and the nightmares will flee before me
And my shiny guitar, and we'll melt together, my guitar and me
So I can be a sexual object instead of pasty mismatched flesh,
The ultimate object, desired, used, play me like a standard riff,
Write all over me, I am the time-honoured woman-shaped cock of
Pop culture gods, loved for the moment then unplugged and wrapped up.

Up up, let me up you fucking bastards, take the straps off, I'm awake
Oh god I'm awake, don't start yet, I'm not asleep yet
Put the scalpel down, please, please, don't start yet
I've never done this before, I'm still scared, still a little boy
Will this make me a man, give me freedom, I don't care
Oh my god I'm not asleep yet, let go of me, please
Knock me out....

Anything, anything, hit me over the head, make me sleep
Make me dead, make me unconscious, unfeeling
Anything, anything but banging away on my dirty keyboard,
Making up voices in my head and feeling my stomach churn
And my brain run in circles, give me anything but sitting, sitting
Counting seconds to morning.