Break Some Ice

The roaring twenties were probably Not as loud as they should have been My roaring twenties were quiet As quiet as the center of the ocean As quiet as a frozen lake in the middle of winter In upstate New York where it always snows The roaring twenties were as quiet as the other end of the phone But I'll keep trying to call you Until I hear an echo back And I get that sound of regurgitated clarity The roaring twenties were as quiet as the Museum of Natural History In the middle of the night And I think I took you there once To watch digital stars spin on the ceiling From old velour theater seats While someone's 9-month-old baby cried The roaring twenties were as still as my writer's block Which I'm constantly drifting in and out of My ice patch of thawing inspiration Floating across some unnamed ocean somewhere Thinking that if I survive I'll claim I was an explorer of sorts Of my split-personality childhood Of my great American highway shoulder piggyback journeys home Where me, a younger me, and all my tributary best friends Experience cuts for the first time Fall in love for the first time Sleep outside in someone's front yard for the first time Dry our eyes with someone's cotton sleeve In the back of a school bus for the first time Sleep on waiting room floors for the first time Watch our parents get divorced for the first time Experience it all for the first time And watch our wisest relatives' physical bodies Crumble into a million little scattered pieces As we get down on our hands and knees And try to pick them all up from the cutting room floor We'll stitch them back together into a beautiful thing A scene comes into view A movie starts Where do we go from here my friend Where do we go from here my friend To patch up all the Holes In Our Stories On and on, the rocking constant calm, the onslaught Don't stop me now before I find the love that someone raffles off My opera highs My grand piano lows And the forgotten novels of my unpainted bedroom walls The roaring twenties were as patient as the letters That I still consider sending out to Anne as she progresses Through the mountains where she walks Through the altitudes of gods I only see her when I travel Through my albums, through my songs And though my flaws may not be seen They're the cause of all my dreams I wear them every single day They're like the scar that's on my cheek And I believe that there's a place that nobody's been too honest with And that our true feelings are wide enough to move continents Drifting in and out of consciousness Drifting in and out of self-consciousness I can't believe I held on to this I can't believe I held on to this For real I can't believe I held on to this Now I'm almost in my mid-twenties, going on nineteen Trying on the costumes in my attic like they're my grief My spiderwebs and teenage box of suicide goodbye schemes I'm trying to slow the shutter down, learn to let the light leak My single mom is sleeping on the couch again I see the kitchen light on late As I pass Molly's house again Is love this faint for all of us? I'll shout until I'm out of breath And bound to let my voice remove the youth out of my fountain pen These are the pains that I take with the great adventure The days that I've laid to rest as my age begets the potential Of raising hell up against the invasion Of waves they left you And placed you in safe saving Displaced you in case of death You'll never know until you live it So get out there and live it Get out there and break some ice I want to see you drifting You'll never know until you live it So get out there and live it Get out there and break some ice, kid I want to see you drifting