Unjust temporality stops me when I try to breathe the scenery
With a sugary sincerity I'm back to my to do list after this stop and frisk
But by the time the light is off the sun is bryter later than it was just then
And that wistful brown-eyed daughter just behind her failing father disappears from me, nothing to see, blame temporality

She says daughters are just potters hoping someone stops and takes the time to look around
But young male window shoppers always break pots in her sweet shop and walk away
So she's working from home now, taking photos and uploading her wares online
Seeking sublimation and some odd choice incantations in estate sale lines

If I lay myself to sleep
Will life catch up to me
I'm waiting outside the house
I'm in my parent's grey van
Flamenco on the radio
Will I die alive

And the man with white hairless legs from countless years in pants with pleats and button flies
Stands idly by the boys on the court, wasting their sweat between the service lines
Oncology, herbal teas, and hidden knee injuries they keep him up at times
Then shove him down the escalator tear his sweaters turn back and yell see you later

He says family is mutual responsibility shaped by habit
He says money only makes you happy only if you lack it
And pleasantries and kindly deeds are more for me than any fool that believes me when I say that
So please my daughter don't I every catch you saying that

Maybe he thinks
If I lay myself to sleep
Will life catch up to me?
I'm waiting outside the house
I'm in my parent's grey van
Flamenco on the radio
Sweat in the stitching of the steering wheel
Fingers in the window fog
Will I die alive?

And right now underground I'm sure a couple dozen boys discover suicide
They laugh and cry and lie there hoping that they're not the last ones left alive tonight
With teenage glows and menstrual woes they'll stumble up and out the pit of adolescent life
Wake up the next day still high,
hung out to dry like cowhide on the low tide of sunrise
braced to find, whatever's left to find, what their mothers left behind

If I lay myself to sleep
Will life catch up to me?
I'm waiting outside the house
I'm in my parent's grey van
Flamenco on the radio
Sweat in the stitching of the steering wheel
Fingers in the window fog
Seats they're all bowing down behind me
Spent rubber in the fast food cup
Will I die alive?