Visions of Johanna

Lyrics

Ain't it just like the night to play tricks When you're trying to be so quiet? We sit here stranded 'though We're all doin' our best to deny it And Louise holds a handful of rain Tempting you to defy it Lights flicker from the opposite loft In this room the heat pipes just cough The country music station plays soft But there's nothing, really nothing to turn off Just Louise and her lover so entwined And these visions of Johanna That conquer my mind In the empty lot where the ladies Play blindman's bluff with a key chain And the all-night girls They whisper of escapades out on the "D" train We keep hearing the night watchman Click his flashlight on and off and ask Himself if it's him or them that's really insane Louise, she's all right, she's just near She's delicate and seems like the mirror But she just makes it all too concise and too clear That Johanna's not here The ghost of electricity Howls in the bones of her face Where these visions of Johanna Have now taken my place Inside the museums Infinity goes up on trial Voices echo this is what salvation Must be like after a while But even Mona Lisa Must've had the highway blues You can tell by the way she smiles We see the primitive wallflower freeze Where the jelly-faced women all sneeze I hear the one with the mustache say "Jeez, I can't find my knees." But jewels and binoculars Hang from the head of the mule But these visions of Johanna They make it all seem so cruel The peddler now speaks To the countess who's pretending to care for him Saying, "Name me someone that's not a parasite And I'll go out and say a prayer for him." But like Louise always says "You can't look at much, can 'ya man?" As she, herself, prepares for him And Madonna she still has not showed We see this empty cage now corrode Where the cape of the stage once had flowed The fiddler he now steps to the road He write everything's been returned which was owed On the back of the fish truck that loads While my conscience explodes The harmonicas play the skeleton keys in the rain And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain All, all...