The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Joe Wood's picture

    A Love Song, In An Empty Room

    A dead party is crashing through the floor

    In the middle of a church is the darkness

    Prying open a door

    In the wilderness of town

    A girl is plunging headfirst through the window

    Though she said

    She didn't want to

    On the way down

    Listen to the sound, crying in the meadow

    Singing in an empty room

    In his bedroom his mother makes a bed

    Under the table where the secrets were

    The drugs are still hid

    The pictures before the war

    Where he was then peacefully waiting

    Before the bullet

    Killed the man

    Stashed inside a drawer

    Listen to the sounds, crying in the meadow

    Coming from an empty room

    A room enters a man full of whispers

    Consumed by the quiet stairs down the hall

    A weary listener

    Can't just fall asleep

    But in the darkened rooms of Mom and Mr. Who

    Her body

    Is half undressed

    And very calm

    I hear many sounds, crying in the meadow

    Coming from the empty rooms

    A street is flashing the legs of a whore

    In the corner behind the steps, the cameraman sits

    Warming up the corpse

    Amidst the foggy breath

    Two eyes are open wide in a frozen rattle

    Where the battle

    Between love and death

    Seems to loom.

    The only sounds, there crying in the meadow

    Are from an empty room.