Everything about this place just tends to bring me down;
I look into the mirror and see one more hopeless clown.
The people on the street have a sad tendency to frown
and no one wants to be the only soul left hanging ’round
this little bit of nowhere that some joker named a town,
who’s happier to be long gone and six feet under ground.
Everything about this place was meant to be just so:
straight white picket fences and fake shutters in a row,
with people shut up inside watching television shows.
Nobody wants to be outside and watch the flowers grow
along the winding street that follows where the river flows
but still seems to get nowhere, and why, no one really knows.
Everything about this place is waiting to expire;
folks waiting for apocalypse or when they can retire.
The people on the street seem unimpressed and uninspired;
nobody wants to tell the truth or cross beyond the wire.
It doesn’t seem to matter much who’s honest or a liar —
either way you’re wasting air trying to light a fire.
Everything about this place is tied up in the past,
secured in little boxes tied with string and stitched up fast,
going through the motions like bad actors in the cast
of a show still in re-runs, like a flag flown at half mast
in praise of some great compromise that ends the war at last
with an uneasy silence interrupting the broadcast.
Everything about this place falls down around my ears
in echoes of an irony that will not disappear:
sad people on the street seem to accept heartache and fear;
nobody wants to be the only one left when it clears
and leaves each of us naked with our ledgers in arrears
as the sad charade is ending and the day of judgment nears.
Everything about this place just makes me more depressed.
I look into the mirror and admit I’m not impressed:
can’t stand my sad expression and can’t stand the way I’m dressed,
but thinking about changing only gives me added stress;
and anyway, it really doesn’t matter, I confess,
’cause everywhere is nowhere in it’s own way, more or less.
06 NOV 2007