MadameBastet-firing-neurons

MadameBastet-firing-neurons

In The Valley of The Kings

Venice coffee shops and used record stores
Greasy spoons and the blue man on the moon
down on Broadway by the glittering sea
it was all like pharaoh's gold
in the Valley of the Kings.

There were vinyl dreams so melodic and sweet
and we were never too young, never too naive
to become enslaved by the strange geography
of the streets.

Remember when! Remember when!
You could feel! Angry happy sad raging insane crazy mad
as fucking hell about life, death, taxes, injustice, parking tickets
health insurance, AIDS, Rwanda
stolen elections and immoral wars!
Remember when you could feel....and now....

In your bedroom, bare walls and all
is the death bed and there lies quietly, so still
the American Dream, the death rattle echoing off the walls
Yes, the American Dream
flatlining finally after years and years behind the brittle
cries, the unheard screams
a custom-made cliche
but dying, leaving, going, gone just the same.

Hell, it wasn't as if you didn't help it along
I mean come on - remember standing in smoky rooms
of carefully measured discontent?
Wondering how to fuck without dying;
wondering how to pay the rent.

There were songs you loved and words you knew;
once you sang along and now you don't even want the radio on
anymore.
You gave years and years away like worthless currency
not knowing that nostalgia is simply brain chemistry
and love just a strange attractor; and memory itself
some kind of sad self-pity.

Now all the record stores have closed up and have gone away
disappeared into the future tense of technology
and Broadway by the sea is just another street
It's a game you play and you're getting so good at it now
just think dear lady once upon a time you didn't even know how.

Yeah, rock and roll could've saved your soul
but that was yesterday
And rooms hold ghosts
but they will never haunt you
like the words you gave away.

Now the music's just too damn loud
though the words sound strangely familiar;
the meaning is unclear and the sad semiotics
of despair is the only melody you can hear.

You're a stranger in strange places now
You're a ghost, an apparition, a pathetic dream
Die die die you long to scream!
in cheap cerveza bars and cigarettes
fall limply from your lips and glow in the gleam
looking for a light is a bitch in these haunted spaces
there's no smoke no fire and you wonder
was it you that died first
or was it desire?

So you stalk the velvet crush, the glittering comedown,
remembering decaying downtown faces in crimson mirrors
and you fall like Alice but the story is much more grim
You tumble through time back to the event horizon.

And you still haven't figured out
how to black out
before the band leaves the stage;
and it's on someone's else face
that you watch yourself age.

Hollywood calls your name and laughs while you weep
Phantom fucks and full blood-burst harvest moons
universes that go bang! or collapse in the street
and you suck on nicotine for hours and dream of long-ago rooms
now long torn down and gone.

And nostalgia is just a dream, a memory
you once believed it was all real, it would last forever
the smell of cheap leather and sweat and smoke and tears
the spilled emotions on the table mixed with the leftover stale beers

It was beautiful here, once upon a time
We skipped down Broadway by the azure sea
We sang the songs and knew all the words
and we loved the pure and sweet sound of a 12 string
playing gently across the city at night
and it was like pharaoh's gold in the
Valley of the Kings.