Songs For Cleaning Women
Cleaning women don’t take what you think
They don’t care ‘bout your watches or your diamond rings
I just finger a few sleeping pills for a rainy day
Ter, I miss you like hell on the 43 to Berkley
Just remember move everything a little to the left
They’ll think you’re thorough and they won’t judge you after that
You can lay behind the couch read a magazine and smoke
Don’t make friends with cats or kids
They’ll get mad and let you go
Chorus
I put my hand to my mouth when I smile now
And I’m tired of the bargain can someone let me out
Feel the air from the crack in the bus window
And I’m trying to learn
How to cry
Over you
You’ll get a lot of liberated women
Don’t bring dolls for the girls
And take everything they give ya
I reminded you of San Pablo Ave
You reminded me of the Berkley dump
There was so much beauty in our bad luck
Chorus
Cleaning women don’t work for your friends
You’ll learn too much about them
and they’ll never forgive you
But Bob and Linda are different
Cum and blueberry jam on the sheets
Cigarettes in the bathroom
Coke and notes from their daughter Andrea
Plus I can sit on the couch
And stare out the window at our old house
And The 40 Telegraph stop is alive tonight
People lean against the window drinking green cans of Sprite
Harley’s rev their engines, cyclists fly by like a kite
Ter, I don’t want to die at all actually
And I open my eyes and start to weep
Chorus
Love’s Not a Mystery
I forget who I am in English ‘till you call me up
Hear your voice and our history hits me like a Mack truck
The first time we made love when we were adulterers and young
That time in Acapulco with the kids in the sun
And your heroin fits when we moved to the Midwest
When I finally told you I couldn’t take the rest
Chorus
Love’s not a mystery anymore
Love’s not a mystery anymore
Anymore
Well the husband I left you for, he wasn’t all bad
I just curse my brain for being so romantic
Now I’m down here in Mexico by my sisters side
Well you call me up I can always smile
Chorus
And I hang up the phone at a quarter to two
Here your ventilator breathing for you in the room
Life is so messy but it doesn’t seem to matter
Even the best of us say we could have done better
Chorus
Mama
Mama said nothing good ever comes from love
You soak your pillow with tears and smoke two cigarettes at once
And she’d write me all the suicide notes
Least I knew she’d think about me before she’d go
She disowned Laura when she moved to Mexico
Wouldn’t even let her in when she got sick and came home
Chorus
There’s a story God wrote about us before we could even talk
There’s a wind that blows across Texas when they buried you with the stars
And I think about you now in the ground
They put her on a boat when she was just 19
Chain smoked with the captain, laughed and drank gin
She was off then to marry Ed
All the things she could have done if she wasn’t run by men
Chorus
She hated to see us grow and do well
Have a future and get beautiful
It’s sad to say I’m the same way to you
Every action I take is a little jealousy of youth
Chorus
Step
Once I start there’s no end
This booze is like a freight train going off the edge
You wake up with the fear for what you’ve done
Have you hurt your lover have you killed someone
And I end up back in rehab with these guys tonight
Gathered round the TV we’re waiting for the fight
And I always forget how cold it is here
Wrapped up in blankets as the crowd starts to cheer
It’s Leonard vs. Benitez it’s an easy match
Sugar Ray will take it in two seconds flat
Then the rounds go through one and the rounds go through ten
We start praying Benitez will stay in the ring
And something inside me can’t root for a star
Always cheer for the guy they say won’t go far
It’s hard to do any kind of winning
When everything feels like a war of attrition.
They put up the card for round 15
And it’s so quiet the announcers can’t say a thing
Then Sugar Ray mouths “I can’t believe he’s still standing”
Then there’s a 1-2 and the mat meets his knee
And I can see my breath as I whisper
“God please help me”
And I can see my breath as I whisper
“God please help me”
Strays
Go along like the world means nothing then one day it means something
All the connections I had with people I was so high I don’t know if they were real
I fell in love with Bobby when I watched him tame these strays
Mangy and beaten from the wind he feeds him from his hand
You can see the essence of a person in so many ways
Chorus
I don’t know if this is working
I don’t know if I’ll ever get clean
But it’s been nice holding you these last few nights
When they catch us in the morning Bobby says
“I didn’t want to be with Tina you have to understand
I just want to go home to my wife Debbbie and my daughter Debbie Ann”
Those words cut me in two
He made love better to me than most men do
I was happy with him when the moon came up
Maybe that’s why I ravage my body cause I don’t know how to love
Chorus
The dogs are gone for three days and they come back
crying from poison and dying in pain
Bobby puts them out of their mystery
Then I left without thinking back to Albuquerque
Jockey
Skeletons like trees
You meet all the heroes in emergency rooms
Thumbtack in a hat
He falls out of a Cadillac
And I carry him like King Kong down the hall
Chorus
Glory be to me
I’m gonna wake up younger
I’m gonna wake up stronger
But my body says I might be wrong
Broken collar bone and all
He cries for his mother in Spanish
And I stroke his back like a newborn colt in a stall
Chorus