Sally

Once met a girl from Roanoke, Virginia

Her eyes were green, her hair was red, she was 24 and I was 19 and we'd fuck like bunnies all day on her waterbed

We listened to Hüsker Dü's 'Candy Apple Grey' and 'Warehouse Songs & Stories' so many times that my ears bled

We listened to Lou Reed's 'Berlin', I loved the sadness and the starkness of 'Caroline Says' and especially 'The Kids'

Sometimes her and I we'd have a lot of fun and sometimes we'd fight

She had a son, he was 4, one time they dropped me off at a Greyhound bus station in the middle of the night

And I sat there all night waiting for the bus

Knowing it was finally the end of us

It took me years to see where I was wrong

I didn't have any money back then and she got tired of carrying me along

But we kept in touch and one day in Philadelphia

She came to a show of mine and we went back to her apartment together

Her son was taller than me and he was sitting there at his computer

And the next morning we met up at a Jewish deli with some friends of hers

And I don't believe that I've ever seen her since then

But up in Vancouver I did meet Lou Reed I told him how much that I loved 'Berlin'

And he said “And who are you?”

And I also met Bob Mould from Hüsker Dü at an Austin airport on my way home

And he said my version of 'Celebrated Summer' was on this phone

It's funny where life takes you

And all the adventures that we go through

And who we meet along the way

The things that catch our eyes that make us think of yesterday

It's crazy where life takes you

And all the music that we hear that reminds us of the friends and lovers we knew

And as we get older every corner we turn

There's still new things that open our eyes and things to learn

There's bittersweet and love and sadness

There's uplift in the air and there's insanity and madness

Gonna read some poems by some street kids in Argentina

Gonna walk through the Lower Ninth Ward and think of Hurricane Katrina

I remember walking around those streets before the houses got washed away

It's hard for me to walk around this world and not think about yesterday

When I walk through the Broadway Tunnel I think of a shitty fight

That I had with an ex-girlfriend before I jumped on a flight

And flew like a bat out of hell out to Tennessee

Where a girl in a house in the country took me in and rescued me

And we came back late from Donuts and a deer's head was laying in the driveway

An ex-boyfriend of hers was trying to send me a message like “stay the fuck out of my way!”

But I have nice memories of that house listening to NPR and drinking tea

But her puppy Sally was shot and killed when she went onto to somebody else's property

Some memories are happy and some are sad

I take the bad with the good and am grateful for what I have

And walking from my place to my girlfriend's on Russian Hill

I get overwhelmed with memories of the Broadway Tunnel

This life of beautiful animals and people

This life of so much art and poetry

I walk down the street and I'm still inspired

By everything I see

This life of many rivers, seas and lakes and oceans

This life of many landscapes

This life of so much warm sunshine

This life of so many storms and so much pouring rain

I walk past the restaurant I used to go for Chinese

I knew the twin waitresses there, Mindy and Muriel, since they were both 15

I saw them both grow up and have children and I saw them turn 40

Now the place is all boarded up with plywood and I miss the wonton soup there like crazy

The grocery store where I used to go that played music from the 60's

Got taken over by the Google kids from Silicon Valley

But I won't let it run me out and I won't let it faze me

This city has always been and will always be an inspiration

Friends come and go, the world continues to spin

Don't know that I'll ever hear from that girl from Virginia

Or that I'll ever see Mindy and Muriel

But I hope someday that when I die it's near that Broadway Tunnel

Walking by your side around Russian or Telegraph Hill