selected lyrics

> ACK ACK ACK ACK (Jones/Talley) from ANOTHER EP / NEGATIVE CAPABILITY  

Johnny took his gun and Ack Ack Ack Ack
Johnny shot me down Ack Ack Ack Ack
Like this: Ack Ack Ack Ack Like this: Ack Ack Ack Ack
  
All the papers crucify Johnny All the radios shout his name
All our little children love our Johnny
Because he took his gun and Ack Ack Ack Ack
  
Johnny, he's my hero, Johnny, he's my joy
Johnny took his gun and Ack Ack Ack Ack
Johnny shot me down


> ALL SEXED UP (Jones/Johansen) from 100 FLOWERS / 100 YEARS OF PULCHRITUDE  

I've lost a lot of blood she says
lying on this bed of nails
I know when you think of me
and I know what you think 

(chorus)
All sexed up All sexed up All sexed up All sexed up  

I ignore her agony  
I want to hear you breathe
She avoids my guilty glance
and turns into a ghost 

(chorus) 

"Love is all," I say to her
She fucks me on the floor
No one whispered anything
No one spoke at all

> BABY DEMONS (Barker/Barrett/Jones) from WHAT IS REAL AND WHAT IS NOT  

Sleep sweet baby demons
you brought your dreams to life
the ground you scorched is now your home 
You found the way and taught us to see
oh glorious boy who made us so incandescently free 

(chorus)
Here's a song for your lovers
kissed and blown away
here's a song for those you left behind 

Sleep damned and wretched angels
you who cursed and spat out blood
Deliver us from this life with its tiny concerns 

These vermin offspring
desolate and dear
sworn to bring down the world
to empower our souls

(chorus)
  

> BEAUTIFUL AGAIN (Barker/Barrett/Jones) from WHAT IS REAL AND WHAT IS NOT  

How do you find the language for this sensation of shock?
How do you keep moving forward?
When will the feeling come back?
I thought I held an answer but then it burned through my hand 

(chorus)
Yes there's just too much to comprehend, it falls from the air
  (floating down to shattered earth arms open wide)
the known dimensions just can't contain what spills from there
  (sea and sky and smoke and shards of powdered glass) 
I'm afraid to open my eyes -- I'd see that every flower is diseased
How I want the world to be beautiful again 

Stuck in my head for a month
with the ceiling pressing down
I remember the blue blue sky
and I remember the sun 

I don't dare to raise my head
I might blast the birds from out of the trees
How I need to need the world to be made whole again 
I'm afraid to open my eyes -- I'd see that every flower is diseased
How I want the world to be beautiful again
  

> BLACK HOLE (Jones) from ANOTHER EP & NEGATIVE CAPABILITY 

Three feet of gravity
pulling lengthwise, rip me up
Stars dissolve above
down to black below 

(chorus)
Black hole
I've seen this all before
Black hole 

Fingers clutch my head
Gouge my eyes, you want me (blind/dead)
Inside you no hope for me
In a void of complacency
  

> BUNKERS (Jones/Johansen) from 100 FLOWERS & 100 YEARS OF PULCHRITUDE 

First you take the gun take the gun
Find yourself a target
Punch a hole through the window
Take aim and faith and heart 

(chorus)
Oh, how you want to believe
how you want to accept
how you must embrace 

Our houses are our armouries
closeting the bunkers in our souls
Cyanide running through our veins
the poison of passions enforced 

(chorus) 

We face martyrdom daily
for ideals that don't exist
And the measure of your cowardice
is the length of the shadow thrown by your cross 

(chorus)
  

> CALIFORNIA'S FALLING INTO THE OCEAN (Jones/Johansen) from 100 FLOWERS & 100 YEARS OF PULCHRITUDE  

Water, death, ocean depths 
Water rising rising rising
Mountains sliding sliding sliding
California's falling falling into the ocean. 

Friction, rust, salt air, lust 
Passion in its final heat
Real life with its final cheat
California's falling falling into the ocean. 

Beaches, kelp, bodies, we need help 
Arizona stands as the new frontier
There's nothing left of Santa Monica pier
Science fiction calling calling
California's falling falling 

God kills his children
God kills his children
We are drowning
We are drowning
  

> CARTOPHILIA (Barker/Barrett/Jones) from WHAT IS REAL AND WHAT IS NOT  

Green area equals land,
blue equals ocean
Polar regions stand out in white
The projection is flat, is wrong
You take this as a kind of truth
both abstract and real 

I can trace her path 

She's flown the distance shown
from airport to airport
a nervous system takes her
from city-center to nowhere
Now she's there and it's exactly
three hours different 

We see the same sliver moon

> COLD (Barrett/Jones/Johansen)  from WHAT IS REAL AND WHAT IS NOT  

There she was,
flickering in black and white
The light burrowed into my chest,
and left the room cold 

The ghost woman,
she lives under this house
In the dry, dusty soil,
buried for dozens of years 

It's not too often,
I let myself go back that far
but to remember too little
is to betray the heart
  

> CONTRIBUTIONS (Jones/Johansen)  from DRAWING FIRE & 100 YEARS OF PULCHRITUDE 

I crawl into your dayroom
I help you with the blinds
I creep into the darkroom
I slip in between your sheets 

I'm standing in your shower
watching you make-up
I open all of your secret things
and take pictures while you sleep 

I wear some of your clothing
I take food from out of your mouth
I duplicate your keys and
live parts of your life
  

> DYSLEXIA (Jones) from PRESENCE OF MIND & 100 YEARS OF PULCHRITUDE 

I can see into the future
though I can't interpret it
Coherent events become clear to me
although the order is unsure 

(chorus) I read from right to left I read from right to left 

I was sick and I was bitter
Medicines gave way to ways
insane enough to snuff us out
I hate what they have done to us 

(chorus)
  

> FROM THE FIRE  (Jones/Johansen) from DRAWING FIRE & 100 YEARS OF PULCHRITUDE  

Boy takes his hand from the fire
Scorches the earth instead
Passes "healing hands" overhead
Brittle plants lie down and die 

Affecting uselessness in our world 
is typical and not convincing
Those of us who live like wolves
will find no moon to bark out at 

You confuse yourself so carelessly 
You can melt iron and steel
If you really want to see something
Blow the clouds, blow the clouds away
  

> FUN PIG (Barrett/Jones/Johansen) from WHAT IS REAL AND WHAT IS NOT  

A romantic encounter
ruined by the report of the gun --
the gun in your hand
Is there no end to the attention you crave 

(chorus)
You kicked heroin
you cut out the booze
speed is off limits
no more reefer for you 
You're so extreme
I never met anyone as extreme as you think you are 

High up in the hills
in the amniosis of your hot tub
a camera crew is vying
for a shot of the dying 

The last time I saw you
you were at the end of a bungie cord
tethered to a spy satellite
you said you still wanted more
  

> HOLOGRAM  (Jones/Johansen) from URINALS & NEGATIVE CAPABILITY 

I said I needed you
You said you needed me
Mutual selfish desire
I had a hologram 

Now that it's all over
I rarely see you any longer
I plug myself in
I am a hologram
  

> I DON'T OWN MY OWN HEART (Barrett/Jones/Johansen) from 100 FLOWERS & 100 YEARS OF PULCHRITUDE  

All our lives keep droning on  keep droning on (jones) 
Take it down so I can see, real life doesn't mean much to me (johansen) 
Keats rides a Harley I don't own my own heart (barrett)
  

> I HATE (Barrett/Jones/Johansen) from NEGATIVE CAPABILITY & 100 YEARS OF PULCHRITUDE 

I hate … (provide your own pet peeve)

> I MAKE LOVE TO EVERY WOMAN ON THE FREEWAY (Barker/Barrett/Jones) from WHAT IS REAL AND WHAT IS NOT  

I see her singing to the radio
in the little blue bugs and the mighty big-rigs
Sometimes she's talking to her boss on the phone,
"I'm going to be late, I've got something important to do." 

Sometimes she's moving fast, sometimes at a crawl
and her hair is different from car to car
and I think of all the things that I will do for her
to make her life a little better, to make her feel calm 

(chorus)
I make love, I make love I make love with every woman on the freeway 

I ease the tension of a sleepless night
a hard day at the office or spousal strife
Sometimes she sighs and closes her eyes
sometimes she makes me go just a little bit faster

(chorus)

> I'M A BUG (Jones) from ANOTHER EP & NEGATIVE CAPABILITY 

I'm a bug
So are you baby
I want to use my 
pincers on you  

(chorus)
Buzz Buzz

I'm a bug
DDT
is my breakfast
along with tea 

I'm a bug
I've got a stinger
you've got one too baby
Let's wing it
 

> I’M WHITE AND MIDDLE CLASS (Jones.Johansen) from ANOTHER EP & NEGATIVE CAPABILITY

I’ve found my priority
I’ll drop out of society
Confrontation with the facts
I’m tearing up my income tax

(chorus)
I’m white and middle class
Life sucks me dry
and my reply
is shove it up your ass

Yeah, I’m the silent majority
Excluded from your charity
Martyr me with all the rest
Kill me with sterile success

(chorus)

> IN PRAISE OF THE FUCKED-UP GIRL (Barker/Barrett/Jones)  from WHAT IS REAL AND WHAT IS NOT   

Who will comfort the fucked-up girl?
Feed her wine and bread?
Who will quiet the multitudes that live under her bed? 

Who will marry the fucked up girl?
Read to her impassioned verse?
She speaks a thousand tongues all of them in reverse 

(chorus)
She will kiss you like galaxies colliding
She will cut your hair and hide it in her closet 

Who will sleep with the fucked up girl?
Share her bed with porcupines?
She dreams of steamshovels, a cactus grows out of her spine
  

> LAST DAYS OF MAN ON EARTH  (Jones) from URINALS & NEGATIVE CAPABILITY 

I don't want to listen to my radio
I don't want to watch my video 

(chorus)
Surviving USA, they say it's OK
You can hide the useless filth, they say it's alright
It's the last days of man on Earth
Last days of man on Earth 

I don't want to walk on down the street
be a moving target for the tax-exempt elite  


> LET A LITTLE DARK INTO YOUR HEART (Barrett/Jones/Johansen)  from WHAT IS REAL AND WHAT IS NOT  

When the sun is out on a cloudless day
and the birds are singing their song
Let a little dark come into your heart
May it warm you and keep you strong 

(chorus)
Let a little dark come into your heart
Let a little dark come into your heart 

In this perfect world, there is joy and cheer
and the misleading drug of distraction
Let a little dark come into your heart - 
to find answers there must be no satisfaction  

There's the other side of too much focus -
the inward calm of the soul
Let a little dark come into your heart
You need rust to bring out the gold

> LET'S NOT  (Barrett/Jones/Johansen) from DRAWING FIRE & 100 YEARS OF PULCHRITUDE 

If you remove contrition
from the rhythm furious
enmeshed within the claws of hate
the capacity for self-judgement 

We are stumbling futilely
landscape of barren flora
fury giving way to insight
insight blackening into fury 

We have tried to understand
and we've resisted each other
We're confounded by our darkness
directionless and untrue 

We've attained a state of grace
delineated by its absence
We have conquered our worst weakness
by giving into it 

If you disagree with me . . .


> MALE MASTURBATION (Jones) from 100 YEARS OF PULCHRITUDE
(note: approximate lyrics in parenthesis)

She's in his thoughts, bathed in pure light
Sleep next to her through the radiant night
(Solar eclipses,) twilight for him
Male masturbation, dedicated to her

He needs her, he wants her, he needs her

Twitching electrical storms by the day
Magnetic fields won't keep him away
Solar eclipses, twilight for him
(Male masturbation,) dedicate it to her

He needs consolement, she'll break his heart
If they stay together, he'll fall apart
If she says she wants him, he'll pump and he'll pump
Slash his aorta, dedicate it to her

He needs her, he wants her, he needs her

> OUR FALLOUT (Jones/Johansen) from 100 FLOWERS & 100 YEARS OF PULCHRITUDE 

We watch the streets,  we watch the skies
We watch each other drop like flies 

Uncorrupted as you insist
Fallout entices,  twist and die 

The world's an oyster in a bed of pain
My charred limbs are all I retain 

The sword is quick the edge is dull
Our world lies silent twitching in heat

> THE PATIENT BELIEVES  (Barker/Barrett/Jones) from WHAT IS REAL AND WHAT IS NOT  

He believes that economic interest should be the law of the land
He thinks that manifest destiny will guide his grasping hands
He sees a world beyond this one, this one can be blown away
He believes that I can be bought that I will sell myself out 

The patient shows signs of disorientation
The patient is disturbed -- he seems disconnected

> POLTERGEISTS AT HOME (Barrett/Jones/Johansen) from 100 FLOWERS & 100 YEARS OF PULCHRITUDE 

She needs confidences
She needs motivation
She needs to "learn a trade"
She recalls a fallen idol 

He needs electroshock
He needs vacation time
He needs the Diner's Club
He needs more credit 

They're beyond the phase of hardship
They are poltergeists at home
They knock into furniture
as if it's out of place

> PRESENCE OF MIND (Barrett/Jones) from PRESENCE OF MIND & 100 FLOWERS & 100 YEARS OF PULCHRITUDE 

She's got presence of mind 
She gives the gift that counts 

He's got a mind like a steel trap
He takes what he can get from her

> REJECT YOURSELF (Jones/Johansen) from HELL COMES TO YOUR HOUSE & 100 YEARS OF PULCHRITUDE 

Reject yourself
Reject yourself
and your family of ideals 
The muddle in your head 
You're playing with the morality of the dead 

Reject yourself
Reject yourself
Built up from scratch ideas, jerry-rigged, skeletal tear them all down
Throw them on the pyre
Light it, burn it 
Rip out your heart
Place it on the top
Rip out your heart
Place it on the top
and move to Antarctica

> SALAD OF SPEECH (Barrett/Jones) from 100 FLOWERS & 100 YEARS OF PULCHRITUDE 

Listening to you
is air between rocks
Broken bones
between twin Charybdis 

My voice,   it is senseless
and dull with the spice,
the salad of speech,
encumbered by meaning 

Our words are our guns,
shooting bullets
which miss targets
and save only us from ourselves

> SCHOLASTIC APTITUDE (Barrett/Johansen) from NEGATIVE CAPABILITY 

The time of day is not an indication
of my state of mind
The weather outside is not a manifestation
of what's inside 

Time in me is like a vacuum in you
Lost in space without a passion or a clue 

Revolving around you, dissolving into you 
   (Pass me a match, I think we're in Hell)


> SEX (Jones) from SEX & NEGATIVE CAPABILITY  

I feel I'm wilting 
The ground is writhing
Ground-glass consolation
Addled snake 

Tie me up
Knock some sense into yourself
Turn out the light
Breathe out  

Put your hands
Around my throat
Pulselike tendons
Pass out

> SKYGRIFTER (Barker/Barrett/Jones) from WHAT IS REAL AND WHAT IS NOT  

I see a man, he hovers over you
I see a sign, does the letter "M" mean anything to you? 

He is resigned, he misses you so fiercely
He's far away, but he is looking out for you 

I see a girl, I sense a great affection
She has small hands, a strong will, and a passionate nature 

Though she is gone, she misses you so fiercely
She hears your prayers and is happy you are doing well

> STRIP CLUB (Jones) from 100 FLOWERS & 100 YEARS OF PULCHRITUDE 

Thursday night Austin Texas strip club  bring me a scotch and soda
Waitress named Cat brings me a drink brings me a drink a scotch and soda 

(chorus)
I shouldn't feel
She made me feel 

Cat gives me a smile walks away takes the stage takes the stage
Take the stage take the stage take the stage take my heart 

(chorus) 

Thursday night Austin Texas strip club  bring me a scotch and soda
Waitress named Cat bring me a drink brings me a drink a scotch and soda
Take the stage take the stage take the stage take my heart
Take my heart take my heart take my heart take me home


> TEACH ME TO CRAWL (Barker/Barrett/Jones) from WHAT IS REAL AND WHAT IS NOT  

Lock my soul away
Hide it in your mouth
Take hold of my spine
and rattle it to my core 

(chorus)
The unnatural world is in full bloom 
Make me weak in the knees
Teach me to crawl again
Make me… 

Bring down the curtain
and open up this world
Show me tomorrow
in the atomized now

> THIS SONG IS A VIRUS (Barrett/Jones/Roberge) from NEXT YEAR AT MARIENBAD

This song will make you reassess your life
It will prove you wrong
You’ll awaken from dreams that will keep you from sleep
You will be rewired

This song is a virus
It’ll get caught in your brain
This song is a virus
It’ll drive your neighbors insane

This song resequences DNA
You’ll spend many long nights
In the throes of transformation
Your soul will move from head to heart

You will want to go back
To the safety that you once knew
But this song, this song has other plans for you
It'll force you to evolve

This song is a virus...

> TYPICAL TZAR  (Barker/Barrett/Jones) from WHAT IS REAL AND WHAT IS NOT  

It's the way that you are,
you always take it too far
but never far enough
when you're in full swing, you're no typical tzar 

You'll paint the day black
and the night bleached-white
you're torn, trashy -- you're five-star
ooh baby, you're no typical tzar 

You eat your fish raw
and your meat well-done
lovesick bipolar empress
when you're having fun, you're no typical tzar 

Ride the rollercoaster
for the rest of your life
backwards and upside-down
do the loop-de-loop your'e no typical tzar

you're no typical tzar you're my not-so-typical tzar


> WHAT IS REAL AND WHAT IS NOT (Barker/Barrett/Jones) from WHAT IS REAL AND WHAT IS NOT  

Last night's dream seemed so real
It changed the way I think and feel
My body ached with an alien thirst
Night and day, they were reversed 

I heard you call for me to stay
with every step forward I fell away
The sun broke open and split in two
Your skin caught fire, the flame burned blue 

The planet heaved and my body trembled
The stars went out as time it ended
From cradle to grave from dust to dust
From cradle to grave from dust to dust

> WITHOUT LIMBS (Jones/Johansen) from 100 FLOWERS & 100 YEARS OF PULCHRITUDE  

How rich your experiences are
You have all the wealth
all our health
The world turns for you 

How small the world is to you
Giza and Bombay
We were born to trample on,
without limbs

 

The copyright to all lyrics on this page is held by Inane Artists Music (BMI) and is used by permission.

© the urinals 2018