Conor Oberst

The drunk kids, the catholics
They’re all about the same
They’re waiting for something
Hoping to be saved

Sometimes I worry that I've lost the plot
My twitching muscles tease my flippant thoughts
I never really dreamed of heaven much
Until we put him in the ground.

I dreamt this ship was sinkin' there was people screaming all around
And I awoke to my alarm clock it was a pop song it was playin' loud

Well morning came, and it dressed the sky in a lovely yellow gown.
Shopping malls are opening in that narrow hallway of downtown,
filled with people who are shopping for their lovers and their friends,
singing "I won't ever be lonely again"

So I wait for the day when I'll hear the key as it turns in the lock And the guard will say to me, "Oh my patient prisoner you waited for this day and finally, you are free! You are free! You are free!"

I guess the best that I can do now
is to pretend that I've done nothing wrong
and to dream about a train
that's gonna take me back where I belong

You could be happy, the minute you try.
Why won't you try? Oh won't you try?

so believe you're who you are
and stay in character
but at the end of the play the audience walks away
and ill be shivering cold on a well lit stage

I swear that I'm dying
slowly but it's happening, and if the perfect spring is waiting somewhere...
just take me there.

And me I'm in my bedroom drawing in my notebook
Because my hand thinks I'm an artist
But my heart knows I'm a poet
It's just words they mean so little to me.

Oh, I've made love, yeah, I've been fucked, so what?
I'm a cartoon, you're a full moon, let's stay up.

It is clear to see that it is not them but me, who had lost my self-identity. As I hide behind these books I read, while scribbling my poetry, like art could save a wretch like me, with some ideal ideology that no one can hope to achieve. And I am never real; it is just a sketch of me. And everything I have made is trite and cheap and a waste of paint, of tape, of time

I'd rather be working for a paycheck, than waiting to win the lottery.
Besides, maybe this time it's different, I mean,
I really think you like me.

There's a cat in the window, of the house of my lover.
Well she sleeps there alone now, or perhaps with another.
Oh I try no to think about that, I try not to think at all!

There was this book I read and loved,
The story of a ship
Who sailed around the world and found
That nothing else exists
Beyond its own two sails
And wooden shell
And what is held within.
All else is sure to pass.
We clutch and grasp
And debate what's truly permanent.