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Ain't it just like the night to play tricks |
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when you're tryin' to be so quiet? |
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We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it. |
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And Louise holds a handful of rain temptin' you to defy it. |
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Lights flicker from the opposite loft. |
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In this room the heat pipes just cough. |
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The country music station plays soft, |
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But there's nothing, really nothing, to turn off. |
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Just Louise and her lover so entwined |
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And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind. |
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In the empty lot where the ladies play |
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blindman's bluff with the key chain, |
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And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the "D" train. |
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We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight, |
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ask himself if it's him or them that's really insane. |
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But Louise she's all right, she's just near, |
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She's delicate and seems like the mirror, |
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But she just makes it all too concise and too clear |
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That Johanna's not here. |
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The ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face. |
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Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place. |
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Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously. |
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He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously, |
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And when bringing her name up he speaks of her farewell kiss to me. |
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He's sure got a lot of gall to be so useless and all, |
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Muttering small talk at the wall while I'm in the hall. |
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Oh, how can I explain? It's so hard to get on |
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And these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the dawn. |
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Inside the museums Infinity goes up on trial |
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Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while. |
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But even Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues, |
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you can tell by the way she smiles |
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See the primitive wallflower freeze. |
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When the jelly-faced women all sneeze, |
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Hear the one with the mustache say "Jeeze, I can't find my knees." |
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Jewels and binoculars hag from the head of the mule, |
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But these visions of Johanna they make it all seem so cruel. |
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The peddler now speaks to the countess who's pretending to care for him. |
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Saying "Name me someone that's not a parasite and I'll go out |
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and say a prayer for him." |
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But like Louise always says "Ya can't look at much can ya man?" |
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As she, herself, prepares for him |
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And Madonna she still has not showed, |
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We see this empty cage now corrode, |
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Where her cape of the stage once had flowed, |
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The fiddler, he now steps to the road, |
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He writes ev'rything's been returned which was owed |
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On the back of the fish truck that loads |
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While my conscience explodes. |
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The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain |
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And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain. |
![Visions Of Johanna [Live, Philadelphia, March 18, 1995]](/storage/19/188175.jpg "Visions Of Johanna [Live, Philadelphia, March 18, 1995]")