David Thomas Lyrics
Surf's Up!
(2001)

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Runaway

Little sister
Brother Ray is calling
From a phone booth in the desert
He says the stars are falling
He says the Greyhound is leaving.

He's gone to work a deal in heaven
He sees Soda Mountain in the moonlight
He's gone to work a deal in heaven
He sees orange groves in lamplight halos
He says Yeah yeah yeah.

Writers: Thomas - Moliné - Diagram
©2001 Hearpen Music

Man In The Dark

I wanna know where the weather is cold
I wanna go where it rains in your eyes
I wanna go where the hellish winds blow
I'm a wearer of the dark
I wear a dark suit.

I know only falling
The plunge through the blackness of space
Hoping only to bounce hard and high enough
I'm a wearer of the dark
I wear a dark suit.

I dread the things people may know
The stories they fit me into
I dread the things time only shows
I'm a wearer of the dark
I wear a dark suit.

Badly we pass the time
We pace through our rages
Or stare from the depths
Of our own separate cages
Aware of the dark.

I'm a wearer of the dark.

Writers: Thomas - Moliné - Diagram
©2001 Hearpen Music

Night Driving

I knew I'd end up alone
Driving through the night
Going somewhere lost
Afraid to be found
Like a dime store neon novel
Overpriced cheap food is my fate
There is a buzz
Which is cold then hot
Too much love too far lost
Too much hope too far not
The morning is a shimmering mirage
It rises from the asphalt
Like every other ghost town I've ever known.

Some days I feel like a motherless R A G E .

The sky was talking to me
Afraid to look up I frame the future in cinemascope
They don't make those colors anymore
They'll forget everything given half a chance
There's a man who says there is no time
But he's wrong
It's a case of cause and effect
The future unfolds to be a consequence of right now
I keep my eye in the frame
I frame the future in cinemascope
It's a case of cause and effect
I keep my eye in the lane
I keep my eye.

The map is a road
The road is only a means to an end
The end is somewhere out there
The end is always Out There.

See-ya-round suckah!

Writers: Thomas - Moliné - Diagram
©2001 Hearpen Music

River

They tore down the Wilson-Shute last year
They put up a sign about what they had done
Their lives tore loose they drifted into town
Their faces are haunted although they'll swear it's swell
Their faces are haunted
Their town has gone to hell.

I ain't gonna cross that river no more.

The river is bloated
It looks like pasty flesh
The moon's a greasy spot upon the sky
Crops of corn slope into muddy graves
Weeds grow pale
And glow in the dark of night.

I ain't gonna cross that river no more.

I do not want to go to the other side
I do not want to know the people who live there
The trees look like broccoli
Their houses are haunted
The plants have pot bellies
The sun is a rotten pumpkin smelling up the sky.

I will cross that river no more.

They'll swear that it's swell
Their eyes are empty
And their hearts have gone to hell.

Writers: Thomas - Moliné - Diagram
©2001 Hearpen Music

Ghosts

The air is heavy
The lights lead somewhere far away
And the night is powdered
I'm headed into another black coffee dawn.

Nights like this
I feel the weight of history
Somebody explaining it in my ear up close
All those obligations.

That coffee cup with the lipstick stain
Is on my mind
A dried coffee ring A ring around the moon
And neon in a haze.

Tears is nothing
When I see a floodplain
Stretch out harsh in the moonlight
And a river of blood that flows through it.

They tore down the Wilson-Shute last year
And built up a new one
I will not cross that bridge
I know why and I don't know.

Comes a time people don't understand
The stones speak a strange language
Those dreams and fears and hopes
Don't make any sense any more.

Something tired
Something weary
Something hurt hangs in the air
Fearsome Terrible.

They leave the lights on
In this town
All night
For fear of the darkness.

When you're young you learn to love the thing
That is despised
That is unloved itself and unwanted
You may come to dream a dream
And see a vision
Of a future that will never be
What if the dream is too strong
And the vision comes at an age that is too young?

What does become of the dream
Deferred?
Does it shrivel like a raisin in the sun?
I know and I don't know.

Each of us lives in a ghost town
One way or the other
They leave the lights on in this town all night
For fear of the darkness.

A radio is playing all night
For the fear of the silence
The silence of someone's thoughts.

Writers: Thomas - Moliné - Diagram
©2001 Hearpen Music

Spider In My Stew

There's only one language that I understand
There's only one person who will walk like a man
Out of this
Out of here.

I had a good job I left out of fear
I hide away and I hear a hollow laugh
I had a good job in the city
And I heard a hollow laugh.

I had a good job I left for the city
55 years
Years of pain
There was a spider in my stew.

There was a spider in my stew
55 years
Paying the dues
Dues enough.

Writers: Thomas - Moliné - Diagram
©2001 Hearpen Music

Come Home • Green River

Come on home dontcha know?
I was the spy in the heart of our home
A double-life of a provocateur
Like the doctor who won't provide a cure.

Come home nobody's waiting
Come home somebody cares
Come home I'm at the freeway
Come home nobody's there.

I saw this guy in Green River Utah
In a hardware store
Paddling his hands in bins of nails
Like he was playing at some keyboard
Like he was listening to something far away
Like he was watching for something intangible.

I know this guy
He'd close up shop early
Close up shop late
Get in his coupe de ville
Roll the windows up and drive
Air conditioner full blast.

Sorta thing started a long time ago
He'd forgotten how to sleep
Remembered how to dream
Those voices of his brothers in the hills
All them bones of worlds gone by
Time-blasted and sun wearied.

He'd drive so as not to hear
Air conditioner
Windows up
He'd drive till he could drive no more.

Pulled off the side of the road
Pulled behind a roadside sign
Crawled in the backseat
He'd wait for the dawn.

Dawn would not come
Early morning mists would rise
Night birds call for it
The morning would never come.

I'm at the bridge but the river's enraged
I'm a bird but this bird is encaged
I'm a free man
Just otherwise engaged.

Honey I'm a fool.
In my head the morning will not come
I wait the daylight
It never shows.

The carpenter sun would be rising in the east
You'd see him there
Paddling his hands in bins of nails
Like he was playing at some keyboard.

Like he was listening to something far away.

Writers: Thomas - Moliné - Diagram
©2001 Hearpen Music


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