Visions of Johanna

Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet?

We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it

And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin' you to defy it

Lights flicker from the opposite loft

In this room the heat pipes just cough

The country music station plays soft

But there's nothing, really nothing to turn off

Just Louise and her lover so entwined

And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind

Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial

Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while

But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues

You can tell by the way she smiles

See the primitive wallflower freeze

When the jelly-faced women all sneeze

Hear the one with the mustache say, "Jeeze

I can't find my knees"

Jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule

But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel

The peddler now speaks to the countess who's pretending to care for him

Sayin', "Name me someone who's not a parasite and I'll go out and say a prayer for him"

But like Louise always says

"Ya can't look at much, can ya man?"

As she, herself, prepares for him

And Madonna, she still hasn't showed

We see the empty cage now corrode

Where her cape of the stage once had flowed

The fiddler, he now steps on the road

He writes ev'rything's been returned which was owed

On the back of the fish trucks that load

While my conscience explodes

The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain

And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain