Jeffrey Lewis
Till Question Marks Are Told
Well you’ve reached the end but you can’t be sure
If it's the right apartment or the right floor
If you stick around where you are right now
You just fall through the ground ‘cause it moves anyhow
Were you going somewhere sooner or later
Or just pushing all the buttons on the elevator
You gotta’ have free will to live your pre-planned life
You gotta’ pay the bill or you get unsubscribed
And the zeros you’ve found, there’s still more zeros to find
So keep your ears to the ground and your nose to the grind
It’s a liberty bell that rings a dial tone
And a living hell played on a stylophone
So you never win, but you hate to lose
And its bad or worse, that when you've gotta’ choose
Either death or pain for how your check is cashed
Either knife or fork for how your neck is slashed
Who wants to blow-up bed that guaranteed to leak?
Who wants a life that dead a little more each week?
And the zeros you’ve found, there’s still more zeros to find
So keep your ears to the ground and your nose to the grind
What makes an arm unfold is in the elbow joints
TIll question marks are told as exclamation points
Like how much fire hides in a book of matches
Or has this singer died beneath the record scratches
And how I rue the year I’m liable to feel dumb
How I chewed my tears up into eyeball gum
But it’s nature’s way; the way it neatly fits
And then it’s nature’s way to make a faulty pit
And the zeros you’ve found, there’s still more zeros to find
So keep your ears to the ground and your nose to the grind
And when you reach the start you’re small but not alone
You walk a street of hearts installed as cobblestones
Sunk into pavement glass up to the edge of you
Until the dangers passed across the avenue
And if your bed got flipped beneath your ancient dreams
And if your head got tipped beneath the patients' streams
And if your hands got rinsed as they so often did
That’s all they glimpsed after tearing off the coffin lid
Asleep with nothing to find and with nothing you’ve found
With your ears in the grind and nose in the ground