[winter for the subway poet]
[Time: 4'50"]
[Lyrics: Thom Woodley]
[First performed April 15, 1998 -- show #8]
[Appears as track #11 on "Pastor of Muppets"]
[Tim: upright bass, Nevin: viola, Kort: cello, Jamie: vocals, Andy: vocals, Thom: guitar, vocals]


Probably the most melancholy Bert song, this number
chronicles the plight of a man whose intellect is only made
sharper by his poverty and loneliness.


My breath is cold
The vent feels warm
It seems less oppressive curled up
In a fetal type of form
Prenatal anomaly stemming from
A series of forgotten binges
The cold wind pricks my neck like a thousand
Microscopic syringes
That you left behind

Nothing much matters
But pain

Some claim that is was time
I hung to you and now I hang here, hung
(i'd rather be a symbiote than alone with sorrow)
Why bother talking?
We speak two different tongues that never will
Touch (me don't you have a healing hand?)
And the cold envelops me

Nothing much matters
But warmth
And it's a struggle to get warm

I need someone to lend me their god
Mine isn't working
You don't have to touch me
If you don't want to
Just someone to throw
Everything I know and owe
Away

Once I had a girl
Once I owned the world
Now strangers on the street control my fate
I beg to eat but all I taste is cold defeat
(it's bittersweet without the sweet)
I don't remember how it happened but it did
And now I watch the world pass from my personal piece of subway vent
Sometimes I think my soul is meant to die alone

But I can tell that you're cold too
Nothing much matters
But you.


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