Endless Mike and The Beagle Club
The Husky Tenor


Weird Internet

Mainstreet Johnstown
is a one-way
that leads out
and only out,
but I guess everything does.

So whether it's two-way or sixteen lanes,

I won't complain.
I promise that I will not save your place.
When you speak of change,
it's not a metaphor
for what's come before.
This is real.
This is how.
This is now in a daze.

So, honestly, Abe,
did you have them
at "four score,"
or was it more about what you had to say?

Because, you know, that's not how they do it these days.

But the fact remains.
I promise that I will not save your place.
When you speak of chains,
it's not a metaphor
for what's come before.
This is real.
This is how.
This is now in a daze.

So as the so as the indecisive sometimes maybe say,

Hmmm.....

So you take care, now.
I'll take care of
everything.
Try to bring a pair of comfortable shoes

because I don't want to hear you complain.

But the fact remains.
I promise that I will not say her name.
When we speak of change,
it's not a metaphor
for what's come before.
This is real.
This is now.
This is how...

Hmmm....

Walking on the Side of the Road

So first I was a bomb in a briefcase;
a mess of smoke and fear.
I couldn't hide it from me let alone anyone in here.

I saw myself in the mirror
for the first time in a while.
I was rudely interrupted by a guy with a great big smile.

I said, "thanks a lot for nothing, asshole.
Is this some kind of joke?"
He said, "I don't hear anyone laughing over
the sound of you as you choke.
But don't let it go to your head.
There's room enough in here for us both."

So then I was a priest at a pulpit
and the only people in the nave
where the only people that my message would never save.

So Jesus, if you're really coming,
really you should get here soon.
The price of gasoline's been going through the roof.

So should we mourn like we believe in something
or live like someone died?
Do good things happen to terrible people?
Is there even such a thing? I still can't decide.
I open the paper
and let it make up my mind.

I want to be a cause with no martyr.
I want to be a fight I can't win.
Let's give it up to the ghost that haunts me once again.

Because even though it's falling apart, I still want it
and even though it's all I know,
it seems to me, if you never quit writing,
you never have to read what you wrote.
And how is that different from making it up as you go?

And how is that different from walking on the side of the road?

And how is that different from everything that I know?

The Yellow Walkie-Talkie

The Yellow Walkie-Talkie

There's no shame in living in the red.
I'm not going to wait until it's overhead.
There's no such thing as a fair wage
and it's better to owe something to yourself than to own anything, anyday.

But when we think we're owed an explanation
as to how we arrived at this destination.
"Destiny" and "nation,"
each has nothing to do with the other's definition.

They treat us like the new kid in a school,
like our mantra's "do you dare me to be cool?"

But dare I say that it's okay,
or at least that it will be?
If it makes it easy, when you're feeling all alone,
you're feeling all alone with me.

Don't you see?

But oh, what fortune we were too young to remember
when first the umbilical cord was severed.
There are those of us not yet over that day
and that affliction is called "nationalism." Think about it this way:

You can scream out "fuck the poor!" and "God hates fags!"
or you can go into a street and burn a flag,
but only one of these is a crime.
Tell me who in his right mind really thinks that it's alright

to put a place before it's people?
Well, I guess that that's one form of sodomy that's never been illegal.

And if it's killing you, it kills me, too.
But somehow it's alright.
Did you get the invite? You're invited cordially
to feeling alone with me.

Because there's a bell with a crack in it ringing to deafened ears.
There's a "W" standing for "wrong" for four more years,
but he believes in a Jesus and that's all some people can hear
not the backwards grind of the gears.

But when they've made me feel like I'm all by myself,
it helps to just feel helpless with somebody else,
where I can let my heart bleed all over my sleeve.
I want to see change in my lifetime, is that so naive?
I want to see the old ways burn, is that so wrong of me?
I want to see an end to this New American Century.
I want to know that everyone feels alone like me.

Untitled as of Yet

Untitled as of yet

I've got a few hours to kill
(if they don't kill me first),
a television set with the sound off,
a stack of books my friends all recommend,
but I'm laying here staring at the same ceiling that's covered my head
for twenty-four years, almost twenty-five.
And the telephone won't stop ringing
and I can't find your number.

Lock and Keystone

I've been where I'm supposed to be
at least once or twice now.
I always end up driving away the first day the weather gets nice out.
Luckily there are only two seasons
in Western PA,
just construction work and snowstrorms,
and either way they cause a delay

so I'm always late
for everything,
but it's a great excuse,
so i can't complain.

I remain.
I remain.

I meet this guy who says he's lived here his whole life
and now he's pushing seventy.
He says he knows the name of everyone in this town who has done the same and believe me, there are plenty.
So I said, "maybe sometime you could introduce me
to someone who's lived here longer than you;
whoever owns that house on the corner
with the stained-glass windows and the pointed roof."

He says, "I've got to warn you,
He's a bit of a recluse.
Maybe try the bars,
buddy, that's what we do."

I remain.
I remain.

Right now, I've got my wallet full
of things that I don't need:
my money and my ID
and Laura's old apartment key.

I watch the grass grow greener on the other side
and it makes my eyes water when it gets cut.
I leave my keys in the ignition, lock the door, and slam it shut.
Maybe this will keep me away from college.
Last time I went, I guess I never left home.
I'd just wait for the weekend so I could still pretend I hadn't grown;

hadn't grown alone,
hadn't grown so small,
hadn't grown apart.
I didn't grow at all.

I remain.
I remain.

I remain
in the same state.

The Outlaw Trail

Buildings tumble, people crumble, nothing seems to last.
Once you held your head until those feelings passed.
And I tried to call you. I tried to stall you. I guess you got there first:
to that place where anger takes whatever hurts.

Well what if one day everything you used to think you knew
turned around and turned the doorknob and just walked right out without you?
Could you stand to just start over? Would it really be so bad?
I asked my mom, she told me, "go and ask your dad."

Because like the cure for cancer, if there's an answer, no one lets it out
because the cost of treatment makes the world go around.
And it's like all these fears through all these years were rings inside a tree
and it you were cut open, they'd be there to see.

Well I see inside you're insisting that nobody really cares.
Well, fuck that. Tell yourself you're beautiful and meet me on the stairs.
We've got a million different feelings that we need to hammer out
so by the morning we'll have walked beyond the shadow of a doubt

and into the sun and then back into the shade again.
The leaves are on the branches and the cars that pass us can't see in to find us.
"Me and someone else" don't make an "us."
So start over if you must,
but I refuse to let it end this way.

This Machine Kills Pacifists

This Machine Kills Pacifists

If I ever meet Free-wheelin'-
era Bob Dylan,
I'd tell him that we had the same dream.

And he would probably say,
"you mean that one on the train?
You and everybody else, it seems."

And I would probably say,
"Yeah. You're right. Okay.
But why do you think that is?"

And he'd probably reply with,
"friend, I don't know why. It
just seems to be what happens.

That everybody changes into mothball scented clothes,
telling stories that never even happened,
at least not the way their versions go."
Oh yeah?

Well, it's not youthful naivete
or some ungrateful bellyache
or living like I'm trying to forget.

I know there's something commendable
with being responsible and dependable,
I just haven't figured it out for myself yet.

And I know there's something I should say
to make it all okay,
but all I have to show for it,

at the age of twenty-three
is this juvenile philosophy:
"There's more to life than taking people's shit."

Oh yeah? Well how many people start cool and end up cold?
Is that some kind of prerequisite to getting out and getting old?
Oh yeah?

But when the boredom in your life
meets the boredom in your eyes,
justify it all you like,
but some things should never change.

So if I ever have an audience
with nowadays-era Dylan,
I'd just ask him where the hell has he been,

when will he return,
and why is he concerned
with commercials and lawsuits against Hootie and the Blowfish?

And if you ever meet
Husky Tenor-era me,
promise you'll promise me this:

Still my beating heart
if ever I'm a part
of what I nowadays try to resist.
Oh yeah.

The Call Is Coming From Inside The House

The Call is Coming from Inside the House

Houses don't know that they're houses.
Pets don't know they're your pets.
They spend their whole lives confined to those houses,
they've got nothing to compare it with.

Hipsters don't think that they're hipsters.
Bad guys don't think that they're bad.
People don't know that they're teaching each other
to want only what they can't have.

So what don't I know that I am?
What don't you know that you are?
I feel like driving all night with my brother
in a car that doesn't know it's a car.

The sun doesn't know it sustains us.
The clock doesn't know it's on time.
Still every February twenty-nineth, every four years,
somehow it doesn't seem like March in our minds.

But this song doesn't know that it's empty
and this room doesn't know it's a song.
And people drift in and out of my life
like they don't even know that it's wrong.

But only a fool speaks in absolutes,
though they never know that they are.
What if tonight we just all cleanse ourselves
of these scars that don't know that they're scars?
What if it's really that easy and we only think that we know that it's hard?

All Points Bulletin

All Points Bulletin

The trees look lovely in the sunlight
as I'm staring at the ground.
The kids are coming back to college.
I live here all year round
without a formal education,
Do I have anything to say?
with all this talk of "destination,"
when I forgot about "Point A."

A point I thought I made when I made it a point to try
and nothing anybody had to say about it then was ever going to make me bat an eye.

I used to keep my eyes closed
through these fireworks displays
and know that what I pictured in my mind
could blow the truth away.
Oh, once so proudly did I hail from Point A.

A point I thought I made when I made it a point to say
that nothing in the world outside of art or truth or rock and roll is ever going to get in the way.

So I pick up the pace
to find a road to take,
to get home before the streetlights are on again.

The trees look lovely in the moonlight
and the shadows that they cast
are just as lovely as the feeling
of talking about the past
and knowing everything is on track.

Because there's a beginning
and there is an end.
There is a line and I am
drawn to it again.

It's like I never missed it
and it never missed me,
and it doesn't matter if there
ever will be
a point b.

Route 1981

Route 1981

We didn't come out of nowhere
whether we belive that we're bound to end up there,
along the way we keep an eye
on passengers and passers-by,
on road blocks and on one way streets.

I had the chance of a lifetime.
Whether I believe that the course set is all mine,
I've got an atlas I can hold,
I've got a road map you can fold,
I've got a station we can change

but the world we live in isn't giving anything for free
unless we think it should be.
A lesson learned of you and you and you and me.

One more stop for the tour guide
to buy a souvenier that matches the inside
to get a look at those who paid to see what somebody else made
to hear what somebody else said before

and one more drink for the driver
who always kind of hoped he would be a survivor.
And so what better way to learn than first to crash but not to burn,
to back up traffic on Route 1981?

But the ice we're skating won't be waiting for another night
as cold as this one
or a warm sun.
A lesson learned of you and you and everyone.

But it's not the height or weight that has been sinking
arks or breaking covenants,
it's crossing over solid yellow lines,
it's failing to make the worst of worst times.

I always thought I would find you
if I just looked up and saw I was behind you.
I'd let your brakelights be my guide,
let someone else give me a ride
or lose my words and have to start again, so

We didn't come out of nowhere.
Whether we believe that we have to be somewhere,
we know that nowhere feels the same once there's a place put to a name,
a TV dinner in the living room.

I stayed in bed until I lost my head and then I went outside
and walked around while the rain fell down.
A lesson learned of you and you and everyone who stuck around

to know that all we want is something better,
but all we need is food and shelter.
Everything falls under one of those.
It's just one of those things that everybody knows.

But it doesn't stop them.


Why would it? Why?

Is there any way this could be mine,
everything on this street but the stop sign?

Mr. Millers Opus

Mr. Millers Opus

I wear the same clothes for days at a time.
I've got the weight of a washing machine on my mind
with the whole world bouncing around inside of it.

And as I talk about doomsday and bands,
I'm letting the chance of a lifetime just slip through my hands
and land on the floor by the bed that I'm lying in.

I'm having trouble with sleeping again.
I turn to the stack of books that all my friends recommend,
but I can't even focus on the lines, let alone what's between them.

So I surrender and watch some TV
and just feel ashamed of myself for giving into complacancy,
breaking the two packs a day mark days ago.

And I finally paid off the van then I bought
a new car with better gas mileage than the van got
but I know I'm financing a war fought for greed and bravado.
I know where my taxes go
while my taxes know nothing about me.

My roommate's boyfriend's a nice enough guy
but still I dread when he's here and I have to say "hi"
even though our conversations never go on much beyond it.

I don't know when I first got this way.
I think that I used to be someone with something to say,
but for the first time in my life, I feel more lonely than anything.

Because I know people my age with children
and I know people my age with husbands and wives,
even more people my age with high paying jobs,
even more people my age with miserable lives.
So it's they that I take shelter under
and let laundry nor loan payments ever put asunder
but help me stay happy inside of these four smoke-stained walls,
waiting for someone to call,
as I'm waiting to just disappear.