Available at:
Home Recorded Culture
P.O. Box 23236
Seattle. WA 98102

The Lyrics:
 

The Crook in The Moon

The street lamp tips have struck a glow,
you find ourseif too far away from home,
The blacktop Is a matchbook flint,
the manhole covers about to blow their lids.
Wringlng hands cast shadow dogs,
how they twitch with nervous ticks,
Ivory poachers assess the tusk up in the sky
and they lick their evil grins

If there's a crook in the moon,
there must be thieves everywhere

The murky waters the plunging depths
will we all be fodder for the fish?
The barrenness of a peppered shore
is a land where Sherman, marched once more
with an usher beam down the fire roads,
stealing drinks torn the water tanks,
crreeping on the country porch
or murdered oaken planks

There's a crook In the moon
it plays a cheatful game
it stirs the scraps in an old top hat
to give the stars their names

A tenor sax in the lone alcove
of an abandoned retail block,
The sidewalk cluttered with vagabonds,
a sea of handy legged drunks,
Roving' quilts of pink eyed spies
that patiently await their own demise
As eve departs with graceless bow
and surrenders to sunrise

There's' a crook in the moon,
holds a prospector's claim
like a nail In the wail
holds a picture frame

A hit man in a hotel room
in the conspiring hush of telephone talk.
With a whetstone blade to terminate
the cocksure stride of a deadbeats walk.
Into the silicon valleys
where the whIistle boys cat call skirts.
They flip their hair
as if to dare suggest a just dessert

There's a crook in the moon,
there's a light by the bed
Kill the switch my carting girl
Lay down your head
 
 

Be Eyeleness In Part

I passed through a dark town In a blanket of white
Worn dark colors in the broad of daylight
Passed through the alleys and canyons and back
Through the forests of sawdust and wax
For you to judge our reunion

I covered ny back and I disguised my tracks
But the silhouettes of many threw down a great trap
To crucify, nullify, partition in lead
Well I gave it my blood if I never had bled
And I sat In surrender when my enemy ame
I am beaten in number not beaten in name
So be eyeless in part whether foe or friend
when you come to judge our reunion

I was born to a schoolhouse and there I should die
Learned in decision, learned in division
But the doors of perception were not mine to pry
I knew the warmth of ideals' I knew how the sun feels
The peasantry is not in position to blame
They're fed with the fingers of a fleshy domain
So be eyeless in part whether foe or friend
when you come to judge our reunion

The nignt has its fixtures in wick and in wax
The cattle are lowing the igeons are cooing
When the sun did break the revelry came
Morning I fear the cavalry did the same
And to wrestle too fierce with what follows next
is to stand for the world unwashed and undressed
And let you judge our reunion

I ate from the plate of a teacher I met
With her down cornered mouth I became her pet
Her fancy of fiction her girlhood
Her wornhood wept, her fantasy smalled
She knew and I knew for the love of defiance
All the noise that we raise we're stilt slaves to the silence
These meetings we hold though are never equal
What slinks to the hills gives birth to the sequel
Be eyeless in part
 
 

Washed Up

The midnight choir was singing praise for a poIiticians head
The flotsam jetsam thrown overboard when danger lurks ahead
Between the gulf of this and that the sea of everything
We're all just islands drifting, waiting to attach to anything

Cast away past the bricked up store where the early risers bake bread
That sponges up the night before of all that was drunk and was said
A squad car drops its flares like a pregnant mother ship
"All aboard boys all aboard"
But to dream beneath stars or prison bars it's the waking that is to fret

Last night I smashed starboard into whiskey on the rocks
I never saw the lighthouse I never saw the clocks
I washed ashore beached and bloated at five AM
Drained out the saltwater to fill it right back up again
And I don't need no girl Friday to patch up all my plans
I'd as soon meet the sea than to grasp ahoid of so many lending hands
Hands everywhere flailing limbs that grasp for air Wading out to meet the sea
Or be washed up, or be washed up

I come to be among you here I did not come to brood
But sne's laughing there like she just don't care well It puts me in that mood
I flipped a four top table cause those fishermen were talking crude
They upended me like a tackle box with hooks and sinkers
And if there's such a thing as one good cop you'd think he'd understood
I'd as soon meet the sea than grasp ahoid of so much drifting wood
Wood, build a ship and hoist the anchors free
A sailor's life a viking's death we meet the sea
or be washed up, or be washed up.
 
 

The Every Sidewalk Strut

The criminals need the cops to make a sport a profession again
Hatred drew the weather charts to throw curses to the wind
And the days on end wrote paperback getaways

The community casualties it's like none of them teamed to read
Before or ahead thair respective cornered pages
Like a split from tendency is a virus contagious

And I, I know these streets, every's sidewalk strut on pigeon feet
Every dancing bear caravan, every smiling sun, every motel tan

It's a cheerful team player wanted to man a citadel of pumps and hoses
It's consumption of the time to reflect of the threat our free time poses
It's a string of metaphors for the spit that shines Cadillac fenders

The coffee shop philosophers spouting out their Bolshevik
Their purity of thought is to contemplate how a young Rousseau could market it
They'd sell it for a buck or a brand new pick up truck
To haul it to deliver it in art and song and manuscript
And those who'd sell everything for one ride in a time machine

When set before the footpaths that collide
The consequence is the bumpy ride
Follow down follow down one road
You may stumble on the mother lode

Ten gererations of Conquistadors waiting on that Fountain of Youth,
An anointed purveyor of fantasy to dispense their perception of the truth
An apparition in the dick clack of a lumbering train
That brings the good hauzls the bad from this jumble wrackage of faces and names.
Dries you to a barstool
Promises tomorrow
And says give back all that empathy you took.
You bleeding heart I wrote the book
Let the previews trump up the feature billed then look at me Lord
I'll be standing still
Look at me Lord I'm standing still
 

The Old Javelina

Good times for everyone
Cheap thrills and nickel beer
Green lights and clear skies
Hello and goodbye

May your blood flow Carte Blanc
May you pass out where you want
May you fame the mad dogs
Barking out for scotch
You can't take it with you
I don't want it anyway
I said buddy you're  a darling
drunk but I can't live that way
I got bills to pay

And your mother's darling angels got a devil full of pride
with faith that seems to weaken in the night,
a pitchfork on your left shoulder and a sermon on your right
Don't you bend your halos when you're laying down at night?

By the light above the burlesque pole
there's a nightstand and a cot
Let me sleep it off right there well dreaming is all I got
And I got so lonely last night
that I sat on your front porch

Imagined that this house was yours and mine
The paperboy he greeted 'me I was still there at sunrise
So 'much for bottled charm so much for baited lines
He was a pretty good kid so I told him the story now
the Old Javelina had gone
Hunched over like a question mark
and his Sunday best was on I said
go tell the buddies at the hair salon
the Old Javelina is dead
That he went with empty pockets
And a smile upon his lips
 

Aurora Blvd

Aurora Boulevard you're bastard child your strip is hard
Your hookers are ugly your hotels stink
Your pawn shops are rip offs they scoff at the thought of sentimental talk
When you come to hawk your desperate offerings

Your signs are decrepit
Neon burned out
Like my neighbor the veteran
Forgotten about

But you're such like my lover
on the the bed next to me
Engrissed in the drama of a daytime tv
Not a tongue could berate you not a rib could create you
I'm not your Adam you're not my Eve
Your the gaudy jewels on the winkled neck of a gracious host
don't want her guests to leave
Her to a night with the Persian cat and the romance books she reads
You're a lonely lonely street

Route 66 a million times I walked your strip
Passed your fast food
And I got so lonely last passed your car dealerships
And you gave me the feeling
Of the rootless self
Melancholy for where you are
Because it ain't somewhere else
And I*ve seen everywhere how it's cheapened to kitsch
How it's portrayed by people who are miles from it

Let me tell you bout the west coast
East came and the they bulldozed
And they threw up some landmarks on the sides of the roads
Then they forgot about those
When they tired of the traffic lights
On their cross continental flights
Well they built up the highways
And they orphaned their histories
And they left strips like these
Where a man and a woman can come
And start all over again
Let's start all over again
Start all over again.
 

Spanish Fly

Tequila sunrise I'm a swollen tongue
on a sandy canvas I'm a lustful one
But I get no heaven No lucky seven
no milk and honey I get no one
Stumble down to the fishing docks
where the mossy boulders grow
Where the merchants clutch
their plastic watches
they cannot wait to go home
And circling fins
carrying roles of fives
For lucky Spanish flies

Nearly failed routine field tests
Hungry hands that pat you up and down
Teeth that flash through fat moustache
Pockets turned inside out
Call it supernatural St Valentine your kiss
is behind a drugstore counter
clenched in a pervert's fist

Daydreamers stare bareback in easy chairs
Of-thatched roofs in the sand
They're setting dates they're packing crates
to cross the Rio Grande
There's an innocent fate St Jude to excavate
from the bottom of the dusty pile
There's Iandsharks cruising singles bars with
Rohpynol in viles

And I've seen a portrait of paradise
laying bareback In the sand
I know the brightest days they lend themselves
To the darkest plans
 

Let Me Die In The Summertime

Ernesto's Pizza thrived until the day that I arrived
But the way I robbed that immigrant he could not survive
Shift change I'm out the door round closing time
Load up on boxes of Franzia wine
You'd be doing me a favor boss to restook your supply
Well, the neighborhood relies on your goods to get us by.

Broke out several windows in the old abandoned church
All the wine came spilling out in a smeinary room
Spirituality has way of getting right in your face
I inscribed an anarchy sign on every desktop face

Now I see you outside in a halo of cherry bloom
Like your Monday is 'just a dish rag for your lazy afternoons
Maybe you're the fearless one to set your shackles free
Long before It was decided we'd become what we would be
And what we are
Re. cause I graduated to a full time job.
T 'lipped his pickup truck into a reservoir
And the wind still whispered through the evergreens
But it didn't feel like much more of a summertime to me
I resented that I did not sink down by your side
That I did not burn with you up in the summertime
Now all the feelings that I have are no fight to regain
You hold them near the surface inside your shallow grave

Let me die in the summertime
So might my grave be never cold

Stifled in the formal clothes of cemetery sweat
Six pall bearers with a heavy load my end felt heaviest
I left for California the very next day
I was pounded home by peroxide waves and sunny slang

There becomes emotions so powerful in sway
They stamp out your perception of the world outside today
The reality retreated to most unavoidably
Mine is in that summertime it's where I'll spend eternity

Let me die in the summertime
Let me die in the summertime
Let me die in the summertime
So might my grave be never cold
 

Fingerholds of Avalon

You come swinging like a heavyweight
I stick and jab around the ring
I pour my pain into a fighter's purse
To dangle daintily from your frame

The fortune spent on government
It is your money in the bank
But it's a counterfeit the trained eye spotted it
Dangling empty from the wallet chain

So you stand by the hanging bridge
By the lovers leap into the black abyss
I crawl up these canyon walls
With a grip that loosens that slips and falls

Slip away, slip away, slip away, slip away
From the fingerholds of Avalon
Go away, go away, go away, go away
Leave me to carry on

At the oak desk where you take your cheated test
I'm the wandering eyes of the ill prepared
The obstacle at the head of the stairs
Ambushes the unaware
The clicking turnstile on a subway train
Counts the customers, who pay
I hang around like a neighbor child
I won't go away

I saw you walking with your sugary snack
He tides a hunger he's not for real
The kind that's best before it's unwrapped
He cannot satisfy a meal

So you stand by the hanging bridge
By the lovers leap into the black abyss
I crawl up these canyon wall with a grip
that.Ioosens that slips and falts

Slips away ...
 
 

Disappearing Act

Teenagers your heads are filled with grease
Shriner's daughters you keep past
curfew in the bowels of rumble seats
Bad Catholics eternal fire awaits
You skip out town on a dead rabbit
your spirit evaporates
In the turnes of a Greyhound bus

Young mother young mother go ahead and have that kid
You've already done what you already did
And you're courted and wed to an Oedipus fez
all the boys at the chapter were proud they said
But the fraternal order of power is to keep blood within blood

Misty eyes the music floods
and it harkens back to when music was
Cause enough to drown the locust swarm
Now somber tones become more grave
Nostalgia crashing in in waves
the birds of song that sing on Sunday morn
Are highaway the fruited plains
round cottages of distant dreams
It'd be good to hear those song birds now,
It'd be good to hear those songbirds now

The orange leaves of Ivy league are wrought with the vines of sorrow and grief
The curling coughs of marijuana the whetted lips of stiff fogcutters
Future perjurers who never inhaled or swallowed
Mathematician alchemists practitioners of ancient myths
That turning pennies into dimes a belts spoon feed the production line
Will project you on the screen as an actor bigger

The brass rings to a golden life
Hang from the keychain to a motorbike
Lift a glass to Harry Houdini
all but that final time
He shook those chains clean off
In the end even that was a pretty good disappearing act

Like a postcard that flutters into ashiny mailbox
Like a postcard that flutters into a shiny mailbox
It said tell the oldest my ship went down in the middle of a stormy sea
Tell the youngest about my deep blue eyes and my perfect set on teeth
Just like Mr. America's

There's no goodbyes
We put our lives behind us or ahead in billowed clouds
That float away or come to burst raining down to quench the thirst
Of the dust bowl cults that pray to sacred cows
And falling down on bended knee to a dirty droughts
epiphany to say.

"I believe in magic now"

Misty eyes the music floods and it harkens back to when music was
Cause enough to drown the locust swarm
Now somber tones become more grave nostalgia crashing in  in waves
The birds of song that sing on Sunday morn
Are highaway the fruited plains round cottages of distant dreams
It'd be good to hear those songbirds now
It'd be good to hear those songbirds now
 
 

Musicians:
Jason Rinker - percussion on Washed Up, Spanish Fly, The Crook In The Moon
Todd Kovall - cello on Washed Up Be Eyeless In Part
Michael John Serpe - screams on Washed UP
Matt Setter - bass on The Every Sidewalk Struit
Aaron Norris - dirty guitar on Aurora Blvd
Scott Griggs - drum kit on Spanish Fly
Hannah Kirshenbaum - vocals on Spanish Fly
Ben O'Roarty - trumpet on Spanish Fly
Michael Hallett - Banjo, Mandolin on The Crook In The Moon, guitar on Fingerholds of Avalon
C.S. - Acoustic Guitars, Bocals, Harmonicas, Organ, "It's the lyrics" man

Words and Music:
Colin Spring
Copyright 1999
Cover reproduction of Watson And The Shark by John Singleton Cpely 1978
Dedicated of course to Philip G., Greg R. and Eliot S.