Visions of Johanna (Live)

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 doing 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 who so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind
In the empty lots where the ladies play blind man's bluff with the key chain
And the all night girls they whisper of escapades out on the D train
You can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it's him or them that's insane
And Louise she's all right she's just near
She's delicate and seems like veneer
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 not taken my place
Now little boy lost he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery he likes to live dangerously
And when bringing her name up
He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
He's sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all
Muttering small talk at the wall while I'm in the hall
Oh how can I explain
It's so hard to get on
And these visions of Johanna they kept me up past the dawn
Inside the museums infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after awhile
But Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles
See the primitive wallflower freeze
When the jelly-faced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say jeez
I can't find my knees
Oh 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 you man
As she herself prepares for him
And Madonna she still has not showed
We see this empty cage not corrode
The fiddler he now steps to the road
He writes 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 and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain