I'll Remember Kansas City

a song; key of F#
for EED

I still feel your breath on the t-shirt I gave you;
The garlic and salt from the dinner I made you;
The tent in the rain; the coldness of April
The gin and the ginger; the way I repaid you

We both know Missouri is so far away
From the lights of Detroit where my passions will stay
Until 75 makes me make up a day
when the south is so north and tonight is a day

When we wake up with sunlight; we wake up to wind
And the church bells calling to relieve us of sin;
Our mothers will bathe us; they'll keep us akin
To the saints and the ways of the Church we befriend

A light and a darkness—we see the kids smile
From the years I spent writing in my own denial
And the numbers you love—the ones I defile
While your father shot bullets so deep in the wild

I'll read you a poem; I'll sing you a song
That I wrote while you kissed boys all over your lawn
Then slept 'til the liquor awoke you at dawn
And I was not there; I was twelve hours gone.

I'll remember the City that you call your home
And how you will live there, well God only knows
But the World is your cup and you'll drink it alone
While I sit and wish that this truth was unknown

The Ride

a song

The nurses in their scrub caps
Smoking at the bus stop
The hospital's a death trap
Where their feet and their hands rot
A pregnant woman sitting
Trying to hold her belly
She doesn't say a damn word:
Her frowning is what tells me
That she is left enamored
By her baby's kicking
She can't fall asleep
'Cause the ride is so sickening

Quiet on the highway;
Nothing but an engine
No signs to show the way
To the freeway's beginning
Lovers holding hands, how
They always seem to whisper
About how they fight now
'Cause it's so hard to kiss her
When reeking of a lipstick
Darker than her own shade:
Her lips are smooth and slick
But her body's not the same