Visions of Johanna
Ain't it just like the night to play trickswhen you're tryin' to be so quiet?We sit here stranded,though we're all doin' our best to deny itand Louise holds a handful of rain,temptin' you to defy it.Lights flicker from the opposite loftin this room the heat pipes just cough,the country music station plays softbut there's nothing, really nothing to turn off:just Louise and her lover so entwinedand these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind.
In the empty lot where the ladies playblindman's bluff with the key chain,and the all-night girls they whisperof escapades out on the "D" train.We can hear the night watchman click his flashlightask himself if it's him or them that's really insane.Louise, she's all right, she's just near,she's delicate and seems like the mirror,but she just makes it all too concise and too clearthat Johanna's not here.The ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her facewhere these visions of Johanna have now taken my place.
Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriouslyhe brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerouslyand when bringing her name up,he speaks of a farewell kiss to me.He's sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and allmuttering small talk at the wall while I'm in the hall.How can I explain?Oh, it's so hard to get onand these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the dawn.
Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trialvoices echo this is what salvation must be like after a whilebut Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues:you can tell by the way she smilesSee the primitive wallflower freezewhen the jelly-faced women all sneezeHear the one with the mustache say,"Jeeze I can't find my knees"Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mulebut these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel.
The peddler now speaks to the countesswho's pretending to care for him sayin',"Name me someone that's not a parasiteand I'll go out and say a prayer for him"But like Louise always says"Ya can't look at much, can ya man?"as she, herself, prepares for himand Madonna, she still has not showed.We see this empty cage now corrodewhere her cape of the stage once had flowedThe fiddler, he now steps to the roadhe writes ev'rything's been returned which was owedon the back of the fish truck that loadsWhile my conscience explodesthe harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rainand these visions of Johanna are now all that remain.