Well, I left with my father's tears staining my shirt   It seemed the second opinion supported the first   And though he could keep his composure in the face of the worst news   My brother would be dead before it snowed      A crow in the park across the street was attacking   Some tourist eating lunch and I just burst out laughing   When he waved around his paper as if he were acting   In some Shakespeare in the Park show      The bus doors split open but I didn't get on   I peered up at the driver through two metal arms   And I asked him, "Friend, how close do you feel to God?"   And then he pulled closed the doors and was gone      And so I walked for an hour to get to my apartment   And the lot around the building was crowded with carts   And old boxes with bodies all wrapped-up inside them   A man in the dumpster looked on      So I called to him, "Neighbor, what keeps you on living?"   And he grinned with a gleam in his eye   He told me, "Boy, I've not one thing to show for myself   And that's why I'm not ready to die   You see, the emptiness keeps me alive"      Upstairs, I called an old girlfriend to see if she'd remember me   Well, she sighed and replied, "I know we once held so tenderly"   But you face has since been lost in an ocean of memories   And I'm just not cut out for the sea, see?"      And so I went for another walk around through town when it got later   The scene looked like an old photograph- the streets signs were fading   To nothing, but someone was calling my name   When a car almost ran me right through      I spun and careened like a drunk in an alley   And collapsed on the steps of a church   The muddled song of the goers broke through and charged at me   And I wondered how many were cursed      As I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran      And then I came to a market where I'd never been   And a girl at the register, she saw me walk in   And I begged to her, "Sister, confess to me your sins   So I might forget what I'm in"      Well, she took me on home and she poured me some coffee   And I helped with the dishes and we listened to Morrissey   As we slept and we talked about denial and prophesy      And then we came to the root of the thing   Yeah, we came to the root of the thing   That's when I left her and came here to sing