Visions of Johanna

Ain't it just like the night to play

Tricks when you're trying to be quiet?

We all sit here stranded

We're all doing our best to deny it

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

Lights flicker from the opposite loft

In this room the heat pipes just cough

The country 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

In the empty lot where the ladies play

Blindman's bluff with the key chain

And the all-night girls

Whisper of escapades out on the "D" train

The night watchman click his flashlight

And wonders just who is insane

Louise, she's all right, she's just near

She's delicate and it seems like veneer

But she makes it concise and too clear

That Johanna's not here

The ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face

And these visions of Johanna have now taken my place

Oh, little boy lost, he takes himself seriously

He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously

And in bringing her name up

He speaks of a farewell kiss to me

He's sure got a lot of gall

To be so useless and all

Muttering small talk at the wall while I'm in the hall

Oh, how can I explain?

It's so hard to get on

And these visions of Johanna kept me up past the dawn

Inside the museum, Infinity goes up on trial

Voices echo, "So this is what salvation's like after a while"

Mona Lisa had the highway blues

You can tell by her smile

See the primitive wallflower freeze

And the jelly-faced women all sneeze

And the one with the mustache says, "Jeez, I can't find my knees"

Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of a mule

These visions of Johanna make it all seem so cruel

Well, the peddler now speaks

To the countess who's pretending to care for him

He says, "Name me someone not a parasite

I'll go out and pray for him"

But like Louise always says

"You can't look at much, can you?"

As she, herself, prepares for him

My Madonna, she still has not showed

This empty cage now corrodes

Where her cape of the stage once had flowed

The fiddler now steps to the road

He writes all's been repaid that was owed

On the back of a fish truck that loads

While my conscience explodes

The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain

And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain

Yes, these visions of Johanna are now all that remain