Heard about a van loaded with weapons, packed up and ready to go. Heard about grave sites, out by the highway, a place nobody knows. Lived in a brownstone, lived in a ghetto. I've lived all over this town. Met a woman riding the trains. Said, "This ain't no party and I ain't foolin' around."
Transmit the message, hope for an answer someday. Got three passports, a couple of visas, no one knows my real name. Loaded the trucks high on a hillside, everything's ready to roll. Sleep in the daytime, work in the night time. Seems like I'll never get home. This ain't no party, got no time for that now. Talking Houston, maybe Detroit, even Pittsburgh, PA.
I know not to stand by the window, somebody's gonna see me up there. Got some groceries, peanut butter, nuff to last a few days. Got no speakers, got no headphones; there's no playlist to play. Said no to college, said no to night school. It's gonna be different this time. Can't write a letter, can't send a postcard. Ain't got time for that now.
Trouble in transit, approached a roadblock. Blended in with the crowd. Got computers, been tapping wi-fi. Not sure that's even allowed. Dress like students, sometimes housewives. Could use a suit and a tie. Changed my hairstyle, tattooed my skin, can't even look like myself.
Then I met you. You make me shiver, you're anything but tender; we make a pretty good team. Are you exhausted? I'll do the driving, you get you some sleep. I burned all my notebooks. What good are they, anyway? You're going to help me survive. My chest is aching, filled with burning; the burning's keeping me alive.
Halley? She's a sun-eyed girl. Even in death, her diamond hands are tied behind her back. Unusual cruelty is planned. They let nothing go, let nothing form; they let nothing. They are priests of nil. Her magnificence is forced into the midnight bottom of an anonymous dumpster. She's taken away from herself, dumped into a landfill of dried and dusty bones inching toward a land-filled life.
I see her with her hands tied behind her back. Death burns brightly, life screams a fountain of white noise. My ears are ringing. They're planning a midnight hanging, hands tied behind her back; she doesn't even know what's wrong. They're gonna make me make her die; they say that's the only way to survive. I plead, "Please, take her where her soul belongs. She doesn't even know what's wrong."
They changed their approach again; maybe they think that'll do it. Maybe I'll become as dull as they are. No, they fucked my future. I'm transmitting another message into the receiver. I'm calling for an answer from someday, a day that never was. Got three passports, couple of visas; they don't even know my real name.
I'm standing beside myself; passing time, waiting for love. Home is what I want, but it's too far away; they've moved it from where it is. Am I where I need to be, when I need to be? If I can't go where I want then ... what? A life without autonomy, agency? I can't go home. Halley? I can see you in the twilight, your wings spread and lifted. Me? I'm a man alone, the dust of the future already settled.
My soul, a flame tied by rope to a tree. The universe has been hung on the back of gravity. Fear rattles in my ears, the fear of others afraid of me. Just let me do the hanging. I'll hang the stars as ornaments on the Tree of Life. Their fear, though, blows like darkness through candle light.
Pray and kneel, I'm told; I ain't got time for that now. I feel their fever, a heat in the face of the night. A single blade of compassion carves a sliver of silver between the kisses of Halley's dreams. My sight is blinded by the jewels of trumpets. There are walls I thought could not fall, altars of dust blown apart by the wind of her wake.
My ship of stars speaks: I am you, floating like a swan. My grace, I think I've got her, but she glides over water, sharing the moonlight with an eternal face. I'll give to her the river, all the way down. Tonight she'll call. She knows what she knows and I know what's she's thinking. You and I, love, that's who we are.
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