Visions of Johanna

Ain't it just like the night to play tricks
 When you're trying to be so quiet?
 We sit here stranded though 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 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
 ♪
 In the empty lot where the ladies play
 Blind man's bluff with the key chain
 And the all-night girls
 They whisper of escapades out on the D-train
 We can hear the night-watch man click his flashlight
 Ask himself if it's him or them that's insane
 Louise, she's alright, she's just near
 She's delicate and seems like the mirror
 But she just makes it all to concise and too clear
 That Johanna's not here
 The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face
 Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place
 ♪
 And now little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
 He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
 And when 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, they've kept me up past the dawn
 ♪
 Inside the museums infinity goes up on trial
 Voices echo, "This is what salvation must be like after a while"
 But Mona Lisa must have 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
 "Jeez, I can't find my knees"
 ♪
 Both 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
 Saying, "Name me someone that's not a parasite
 And I'll go out and say a prayer for him"
 But like Louise always says, "You can't look at much, can you man as she herself prepares for him?"
 And Madonna, she still has not showed
 We see this empty cage now corrode
 Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
 The fiddler, he now steps to the road
 He writes, "Everything's been returned which was owed"
 On the back of the 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