All The Kings Of The Earth

All the kings of earth rejoice

In harmony

One single voice

They trust that all the girls and boys shall hear them

They hope that all the lepers won't come near them

They know that every runaway will fear them

Tramps like me and you

In these desperate motel rooms

Painting of an Indian on horseback

Like some hateful kind of Rorschach

On our bed are spread some pills and booze

On the Tv there's an old cartoon

A silly gangster and his goons

Takes me back to muddy afternoons

Bloody afternoons

Poorly stitched-up childhood wounds

Will I be better soon?

Spiritual rabies

Step-dad's Mercedes

A curse upon the 80s

Look out the window of our room

Busted black limo and a blood red moon

All the kings of earth despair

They bite their nails and pull their hair

For they alone know the whispers and moans that carry over the red payphone at the top of the stair

Beware

It's tapped

Touch it and they got you mapped

Where New York and New Jersey overlap

You're trapped

A renegade

They put up barricades

Walk you at knifepoint to the edge of the palisades

What would you give for thirty pieces of gold?

Would you share all your passcodes?

Would you give away your last coat?

Strip and stand humbled in the cold?

The howling cold

Would you do what you're told?

All the kings of earth shall weep

A tear into a cup of wine

While everyone is fast asleep

And dreaming everything is fine

Dope fiends creep

Security systems screech

All the sheep

Fast asleep

Counting sheep

But the thing about sheep:

Some are cruel, some are kind

Some go cold and some go blind

Some write laws, some write poems

Some are doomed to walk alone

Some are doomed to love a ghost

To hunt a ghost

In city, prairie, town, and coast

To hunt that ghost at any cost

To hunt until we both are lost

Every subject half asleep

All god's sheep

Every wriggling creature in the cold blue deep

No one on the streets

No one in the park

No one at the movies

Flashlights in the dark

No one on the bridges

No one of the beach

Someone in the hallway

There just out of reach

No one in the factory

No one in the store

Is it empty in the bread box?

Are we empty at the core?

Still that begs another question:

Were we all empty before?

Were we happy on the airplanes?

Were we happy with the memes?

Were we whole when we got paychecks?

Were we whole staring at screens?

Are there demons in the software?

Are there gods up in the sun?

Is that a break there in the fence-line?

Would we dare to make a run?

Maybe tomorrow

Maybe next week

Like most sheep

I get cold feet

All the kings of earth take heed

I got mouths to feed

I got a beat up book of poems and a little bag of speed

My little brother plays guitar until his hands bleed

He's written songs that make my eyes well til I can't see

We got friends who drink alone until they can't speak

Friends in need

Friends indeed

All of us staring at the same blood moon

Taking all our bearings from a failed tycoon

All in different rooms

All in different rooms

Will this be over soon?

Will I be better soon?