[Intro]
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[Verse]
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Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're trying to be so quiet? 
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We sit here stranded, though we're all doing our best to deny it 
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And Louise holds a handful of rain, tempting 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.
[Verse]
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In the empty lot where the ladies play blind man'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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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 electricity howls in the bones of her face, 
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where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place.
[Verse]
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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 a farewell kiss to me 
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He's sure got a lotta gall, 
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to be so useless and all, 
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muttering small talk at the wall, 
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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.
[Verse]
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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 Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues, 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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Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule 
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But these visions of Johanna they make it all seem so cruel.
[Verse]
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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, 
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and I'll go out and say a prayer for him." But like Louise 
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always says, "Ya can't look at much, can ya man?" as she, herself,  
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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 everything s been returned which was owed, 
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on the back of the fish truck that loads 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.
[Outro]
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