well my hometown paper's sitting in the box today
there's this article on the 3rd page
saying my old high school girl's getting married
well my higher hopes are like bicycle spokes
we go round and round
she's become just another product of prop and circumstance

The girl I'm with now says I couldn't write my way out
of a paper town like this
I'm an old dog at 23 scraping for new tricks
Well my bordeom reminds me I'm getting old
looking out on a city I don't know
newspaper clippings they've turned scared yellow

The romantics talk semantics only after a couple glasses of vintage wine
and me I'm just trying to deal

people by the handful are clinging to intangibles
I'm envious
When did I leave my niavety to the previous
Charile's gone to Minneapolis
He said he'd save a place for us
sad to think that time and place has digested

Everybody's passing through my life like shots that almost hit
Well I wish they would've wasted me away
Spending too much time with drunks who had their time
story for everyday of the week
their half opened eyelids and yellow stained fingertips
so quiet sometimes you can hear their bones creak
odds are slim I'll be seeing them again
everybody's had their day
not too much to think about and even less to say

back in the midwest there's boys causing incidents
where back seat drivers rule
they got all night to kill

the book of murphy's law
beneath the tires of their cars
driving far away

It was her fireflies eyes that tripped me back into summer
back when I took a philips screwdriver
and carved my name in the soft brick by the popcorn stand
then I headed back down to the carnival
and watched all the lights and sounds
spray out all over the town
like some kind of unmanned fire hose
that nobody wanted to control