Visions Of Johanna

Ain't it just like the night to play tricks

When you're tryin' 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 the keychain

And the all night girls they whisper of

Escapades out on the "D" train

We can hear the night watchman

Click his flashlight

Ask himself if it's him or them

It's 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

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 a while'

But Mona Lisa musta 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

"Jeeze, 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

Sayin', "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 now corrode

Where her cape of the stage once had flowed

The fiddler, he now steps to the road

He writes every thing'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