Land Legs

Patrick swears the number twenty is green
As I'm pushing smoke between my clicking teeth
Grasping straws to watch a quarter note leap
Or to taste all the vowels in some pretty girl's speech
I'm pitching reason at a TV screen
Peeling meaning off striated muscle memory
In a muddy garden, uprooting the butterfly weed
Penciled myself atop the list of people I need to please

'Cause if you don't love the skin slapped on your own bones
Then what makes you think you can toss your heart
To some new set of shaking hands?

Siren sprinting from some sinking nicotine teeth
A car stuffed with silver vapor THC
The latex paint keeping order on strips of big concrete
For million dollar minds and their blinking blackberries
I think my land legs are back under me
After a tearful baptism by a toilet seat
Dreaming about having another sleepless week
Lifting storm windows up for Kitty Genovese

Zeroing the scales for here and Laramie
With orange and purple ribbons stretching sky in the east
Draining out the liquor with my bloodstream sieve
Distill that open futures market of who I'm trying to be
Leaving the girl inside her fabled antique dreams
Shake my sadness into the asphalt of some west bound streets
Pulling down the statues, planting burlap trees
Trying to stretch my baby arms around all my eyes can meet

'Cause if you don't love the skin slapped on your own bones
What makes you think you can toss your heart
Into the bottom of the open air?
And if you can't love the earthquake where you stand
Just look, if it's all the way out in Denver
Then it must be everywhere.