dead city

...riding shotgun with Jesus
and Mary is out on the dash...

we left Co-Op City on a whim
blasting down 95, sun to our backs
Manhattan looks so peaceful across the harbor

A million lights go off at once

under the sky-line you see a graveyard,
"Dead City," you call it, I laugh
the ancient gravestones are skyscrapers
their workers have left long ago
factories are left abandoned, their windows
smashed in the twilight by the rocks
thrown by the orphans on Queens Boulevard

The city never sleeps, but oh how it dies!
Blood stopped in the subway tunnels
Arteries clogged by the decay of human life

so we left this city, hell-bent on a new day

the sun is setting and you look beautiful
a sapphire caught in the filth we've left
it's the filth we'll come back to
even if we somehow find our new day
the search is never really over
we can't escape this city and we'll die tonight
die like the dreams of those million lights
only to be reborn into something we don't understand

but how we'll try and we'll leave again
drawn back by what brought us here
returning with the rising sun
fantasies shoved to the backs of our minds
but the day is old

New York shudders while she sleeps, we shudder too

The graveyard is the city