I was tired of tearing holes in sheets
When the clouds came down all around our feet
But you were there, hands full of leaves
Nose against the glass, waiting to breathe
And when you came up into the hay
How the lights were soft, how cold the day
And how you held me still like a work of clay
Painting my body blue and my eyelids gray
And if you had seen me leave in the morning
I was up at dawn, I was there and gone
There is a peace like painting stars on the ceiling
Like a mother tongue, like an undone song
Sometimes there is a canvas that is blank
And I thank God you have a color and a shape
And you were scared of the fires of love
Seeing the street below and the ghosts above
But we hang our chains and we wear our gloves
With our eyes like fangs and our hands like doves
Stay away, away, I feel the line disappearing
Between you and me; between the river and the sea
I slept half the day just to waste the evening
Coax the vines from me, be my hanging tree
Sometimes there is a crashing in my ears like angry waves,
Like a frozen phrase at the end of days
Sometimes I wake to find my bones terribly aching
I hope you find someone who is yours for the taking
We're all built from dust with our mouths agape
Knowing everybody blurs on videotape
And when we trace the stars we get the same damn shapes
Whether we chant like monks or we flail like apes
And if you had seen me laughing and bleeding
You'd have known my smile, you might've liked my style
But there is a sleep, comes without a warning
And I lose mile after mile after mile
Sometimes there is light that dances in your eyes
Like stones streaked violet and gold
Sometimes you just hang suspended in the sea
Like red and green, like the fire you breathed into my blue snow
Oh to be the light curling beneath your door like the frail young universe
In dreams so green and tender where you sleep
And oh to be the ice that held you up like an angel on the water
I would hold onto you forever and then I'd leave