Friends are all gone, just acquaintances here
Mudlarks tarry on the doorsteps, crows just bark as they leer
Air swoops to whistle through the courtyards
Memories coagulate and return to shards
Fleet-footed through interstices in the beams,
spurned to infer with minimal means
Newspapers cover the walls from before anybody left around was born
The world has started creeping back up through the floor
never needing reasons to carry on for. . . .

Somebody broke in in the middle of the night
& fixed the dilapidated grandfather clock
Altered symbols and chimes to undulate & rhyme,
& now a countenance follows you walk
The patrons sit around & brood back to the past,
picking all the winners that slipped from their grasp
It's impossible to talk as organs knock & grind,
unheard of birds emerging from inside
Even if I've held out & run up a tab,
don't always gotta want what we can never have

But maybe I'm drinking alone,
maybe I've offended &'ve yet to atone
There's always someone waiting to lob the first stone,
shrines to the sun transferred to bone. . . .

Ain't got nothing that's top of the line anymore,
was just this morning that you went & drove it home from the store
Embroiled all yr time in speculation & scams,
in heightened sensitivity to others' demands
Like buzzards on the range cracking open tin cans,
home cooked stew shipped from faraway lands
I think it's heavy water sold at that roadside stand
Anything of value slips into the wrong hands

But maybe I'm drinking alone,
maybe the bridge is drawn, but maybe it's blown
Maybe I got nowhere to go
maybe the only sin is just lying here prone. . . .

Well the commandant's never wandered through here before,
hell he doesn't even bother with a shirt anymore
With an escort of hookers lighting cigars,
what's left of his ranks pushing what's left of a car—
He's talking with the wind that lacks the words to explain
how it never needed bearings to get lost on its way
"This rum was born in the sky! I'm not getting in till the jeroboam is dry!"

Maybe we're drinking alone
Maybe everybody loses their home
Maybe we cast the first stone
just by asking to be born

When Hetch Hetchy's getting sprung we're gonna drive to the park,
coming over to the Tenderloin to pile in the car
The right headlight's dragging like a black dwarf,
the back wheel is wobbling & wandering aloof
Heading up to the hills gonna drop by the coast
There's a patriot's act that's inviting us home
A corrugated tin roof, convertible like a lean-to!

But maybe I'm drinking alone
while others are clamoring ascending their thrones
Maybe it's all overblown,
fissures that close the gaps into the unknown
Maybe everybody's supposed to get stoned,
but I'm just wandering on my own. . . .