Waste of Paint

I have a friend, he's mostly made of pain
 And he wakes up, drives to work and straight back home again
 He once cut one of my nightmares out of paper
 I thought it was beautiful, I put it on a record cover
 And I tried to tell him that he had a sense
 Of color and composition, so magnificent
 And he said, "Thank you, please, but your flattery
 It is truly not becoming me
 Your eyes are poor, you're blind, you see
 No beauty could have come from me
 I'm a waste of breath, of space, of time"
 I knew a woman, she was dignified and true
 And her love for her man was one of her many virtues
 Until one day she found out that he had lied
 And she decided the rest of her life from that point on would be a lie
 But she was grateful for everything that had happened
 And she was anxious for all that would come next
 But then she wept, "What did you expect
 In that big old house with the cars you kept in?"
 "Such is life", she often said, "With one day leading to the next
 You get a little closer to your death"
 Which was fine with her, she never got upset
 And with all the days she may have left
 She would never clean another mess
 Or fold his shirts, or look her best
 She was free to waste away alone
 Last night my brother, he got drunk and drove
 And this cop, he pulled him off to the side of the road
 And he said, "Officer, officer, you've got the wrong man
 No, no, I'm a student of medicine, a son of a banker, you don't understand"
 The cop said, "No one got hurt, you should be thankful
 And your carelessness, it is something awful"
 "And no, I can't just let you go
 And though your father's name is known
 Your decisions now are yours alone
 You're nothing but a stepping stone
 On a path to debt, to loss, to shame"
 The last few months I've been living with this couple
 Yeah, you know, the kind who buy everything in doubles
 Oh, they fit together like a puzzle
 And I love their love and I am thankful
 That someone actually receives the prize that was promised
 By all those fairy tales that drugged us
 And still do me, I'm sick, lonely
 No laurel tree, just green envy
 Will my number come up eventually?
 Like love's some kind of lottery
 Where you scratch and see what's underneath
 It's sorry, just one cherry
 I'll play again, get lucky
 So I've been hangin' out down by the train's depot
 No, I don't ride, I just sit and watch the people there
 And they remind me of wind-up cars in motion
 The way they spin and turn and jockey for positions
 And I wanna scream out that it all is nonsense
 Their life's one track and can't they see it's pointless?
 But just then my knees give under me
 My head feels weak and suddenly
 It's clear to see, it's not them, but me
 Who's lost my self-identity
 As I hide behind these books I read
 While scribbling my poetry
 Like art could save a wretch like me
 With some ideal ideology
 That no one could hope to achieve
 And I'm never real, it's just a sketch of me
 And everything I've made is trite and cheap and a waste
 Of paint, of tape, of time
 ♪
 So now I park my car down by the cathedral
 Where the floodlights point up at the steeples
 Choir practice is filling up with people
 I hear the sound escaping as an echo
 Sloping off the ceiling at an angle
 When the voices blend, they sound like angels
 I hope there's some room still in the middle
 But when lift my voice up now to reach them
 The range is too high, way up in heaven
 And so I hold my tongue, forget the song
 Tie my shoes, start walking off
 And try to just keep moving on
 With my broken heart and my absent God
 And I have no faith but it's all I want
 To be loved
 And believe
 In my soul, in my soul
 In my soul, in my soul